Quotes About Consensus

For three decades following the war, economists, politicians, commentators and citizens all agreed that high public expenditure, administered by local or national authorities with considerable latitude to regulate economic life at many levels, was good policy.

There are four common ways of making decisions: command, consult, vote, and consensus. These four options represent increasing degrees of involvement.

When some folks agree with my opinions I begin to suspect I'm wrong.

We respect opposition to any position or policy. But we believe that the opinion that should prevail and be respected is that of the majority.

Within ASEAN, a culture of peace has evolved as a result of imbibing the Indonesian custom of musyawarah and mufakat (consultation and consensus). Now ASEAN has begun to share this culture of peace with the larger Asia-Pacific region.

One simple question we should ask is which country—China or the United States—is swimming in the same direction as the majority of the other 191?

The collapse in evangelical doctrinal consensus is intimately related to the collapse in the understanding of, and role assigned to, Scripture as God's Word spoken within the church.

La precariedad de la verdad no implica que no podamos ponernos de acuerdo.

When we do science, we want to describe the world in the most objective way possible. We try to eliminate distortions and optical illusions deriving from our point of view. Science aspires to objectivity, to a shared point of view about which it is possible to be in agreement.

As a result of the ensuing debates with his advisers, all of whom had different ideas about how to keep both sides in line, Lincoln could not delude himself that he had group consensus on every decision. He was able to consider alternatives and eventually enlist the respect and support of his erstwhile competitors.

There is a commonplace book argument, Which glibly glides from every vulgar tongue When any dare a new light to present: 'If you are right, then everybody's wrong.' Suppose the converse of this precedent So often urged, so loudly and so long: 'If you are wrong, then everybody's right.' Was ever everybody yet so quite?

Mainstream liberal thinkers could thus, on the one hand, be consistent believers in a purely naturalistic universe that did not furnish any absolute first principles, yet on the other hand have a dedicated faith in the shared principles of the current American consensus.

Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions their reasons are always different.

If a mistake occurs with regularity, it might well become the norm. If enough people believe and propagate the error, it could become gospel.

Of course it was still odd, but when everyone does the same odd thing, it seems almost normal.

A minority may be right; a majority is always wrong.

It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.

A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.

The second, sober thought of the people is seldom wrong, and always efficient.

The public! the public! How many fools does it take to make up a public?

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

Humanity will be obsolete by 2050. This is the consensus at Google and Facebook and Twitter.