Charlie Munger Quotes

Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press

But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.

Men are herd animals, and prefer to go with the flow, especially when moving in the other direction is harsh.

When people are free to do as we please, they usually imitate each other.

The human race is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.

Many of those engaged in a lemming-like march to the sea are proud of their individualism.

Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

People just don't realize how much peer pressure, the desire for peer acclamation, influences them.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Conformism is a potent statement, and as much as we do talk about individuality in fashion, there's a sense that people are fearful of not conforming and not being part of action.

Most people live their life around what other people do.

I believe people think as a group more often than we might realize or care to admit. We like to believe that we act as individuals and nothing more, but time and again - in corporations and business, in politics and religion, in fashion and culture, and in friendships and social circles - we think and do as one.

The world chooses to think what the world thinks.

What concerns me, is the general social tendency to enforce a level, above which nothing rises and stands out.

I think better of our behaviour as individuals than I do when we see ourselves as members of a group. It's when people start forming groups that we have to watch our backs.

Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.

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.

I always look at everyone when we're on the street and think, 'We're like sheep or ants.'

In every generation, there's a strong tendency for everyone to think like everyone else.

People say things they'll never do but then do them because they want to be a part of 'this great thing.'