James Madison Quotes

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.

The market turns out to be just one special case of collective decision-making.

As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what's happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don't seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

A mob is not, as is so often said, mindless. A mob is single-minded.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers. A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind. A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals.

Humans are really interesting. We're so clever, what we do with our brain. How we manage to con ourselves into thinking all sorts of things is really fascinating. By the same token, if we could just convince ourselves of things that would gather us together and powerfully turn things around for the good, that would be awesome. It's doubtful because we're such a fear-based species.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.

Men are a good deal better collectively than they are individually. Many a man will do that privately which he will denounce in a crowd.

Is war an inevitable outcome of competing interests in a complex society? In other words, would war be the same even if human nature were very different? There are mathematical models of large groups working together that lead to conflict on a reliable basis. So there's a whole other view of war that is not psychological at all.

When people get together, we are capable of the most beautiful, amazing things. But we are also capable of genocide.

It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman

In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.

There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief.

I don't think that humans are, in our nature, we're evil or anything like that. But I do think there's a demon in our DNA, in our tribal subconscious that affects the way we work and we operate as a group.

While strength is the natural quality of an individual seen in isolation, power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.

As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

After a certain point is reached the numbers cease to matter, and all that remains is the faceless mass of a crowd.

Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path. ... He has tipped us over, all of us in our teetering expectancy, and now we are pouring toward him, coursing on a wave of sound, of roaring shouts and applause. ... They are the moon; we are a tide, their tide, and under their direction we will wipe clean all the sickness and blight from the world.

This spirit [of Party], unfortunately, is inseperable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human Mind. It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controuled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.

There is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.