Quotes About Consensus

Having a highly homogeneous background, education, values, preferences, etc, in the very early team is better than not - cuts down on time-wasting arguments.

Consistency isn't behaving the same way all the time.

What the government has to do, if it wants to govern for any length of time, is it must appeal primarily to the third parties in the House of Commons to get them to support it.

There's a time for debate and a time for consensus. There's a time for advocacy and time for first principles.

A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what's real and what's not and most of us have been going along with it ever since.

Any time the country is split 50/50, the leader is wrong.

You cant please all the people all the time.

When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.

Some people think I enjoy debate. I don't. I wish everyone agreed with me; it would save a lot of time.

It is time for us to come together as one united people.

The disappearance of any minimal consensus about aesthetic value means that in this field confusion reigns and will continue to reign for a long time, since it is now not possible to discern with any degree of objectivity what it is to have talent or to lack talent, what is beautiful and what is ugly, what work represents something new and durable and what is just a will-o'-the-wisp.

Everyone pays a price for unity. Everyone has to die to at least some aspect of their dreams and plans for true unity to take place. But wherever unity truly happens, it releases incredible multiplying power.

the beauty of the climate-change circus is that you never need to ask "Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?" Mann peer-reviewed Jones, and Jones peer-reviewed Mann, and anyone who questioned their views got exiled to the unwarmed wastes of Siberia.

even if the majority agree that low cost index funds are the main ingredients).

When any body of statesmen make public asseverations by one or various voices, that there is no discord among them, not a dissentient voice on any subject, people are apt to suppose that they cannot hang together much longer. It is the man who has no peace at home that declares abroad that his wife is an angel. He who lives on comfortable terms with the partner of his troubles can afford to acknowledge the ordinary rubs of life.

The more people we can find to agree with our side of the story, the more justified we will feel in believing that side of the story.

Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of of his experience and insight.

Just because an interpretation is commonly held doesn't mean it's correct.

is not to be expected that there should be agreement about the definition of any thing, until there is agreement about the thing itself.

there does in fact prevail a much greater unanimity among thinking persons, than might be supposed from their diametrical divergence on the great questions of moral metaphysics

the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith.

But now, without leaving home, from the comfort of your easy chair, you can divorce yourself from the consensus on what constitutes "truth." Each person can live in a private thought bubble, reading only those websites that reinforce his or her desired beliefs, joining only those online groups that give sustenance when the believer's courage flags.

A democracy, indeed a culture, needs some sustaining common mythos. Yet, in a world where "truth" is a variable concept—where any belief can find its adherents—how can a consensus be formed? How can we arrive at the compromises that must underlie the workings of any successful society?

What do Hitler's inner circle, Nixon's close advisers, and NASA administrators have in common, aside from the fact that they made terrible decisions? Each was a relatively cohesive group isolated from dissenting points of view.