Louis de Bernieres Quotes

Look, not everybody plays well with each other on the playground. I get that, that's politics.

I like dealing with a peer so I can bully them. Because then, it's not bullying. It's just warfare.

The problem with Danity Kane is everybody wanted to play everybody's role, and when you're in a group like that, that can't survive.

That's how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other.

Three people marooned on a desert island would soon reinvent politics.

I think people fail to realize that teams and organizations have been stacking teams since way back in the day.

Politics... have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It's about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it's something that people have wanted forever.

I learned at an early age that using the third person will push some buttons.

I didn't like the 'Survivor' shows because of the mean-spirited aspect, and women certainly were part of whatever conflict they would create.

Social does not just equal Facebook. Social is how people interact anywhere.

In any group there is more or less tension between people, and there are complicities and affinities.

You can have the best people in the business, but if they're not collaborating - and they're butting heads - then it's all going to go south.

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night - professors, officials, the Minister of Finance - but there were decisions that I had to make.

Anytime you get nine people together, whether it's at a party or it's in the conference room of the Supreme Court, you do have to maintain some order, or it does kind of degenerate into squabbling pretty quickly.

When people ask what I'd like to do next, the answer is usually, 'Something with people in rooms.'

I love bringing people together. I think that the environment is so important in terms of what kind of relationships you might be able to create, how people get to know each other.

In principle, every social situation involves strategic interaction among the participants.

A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, concerts and lectures. Yet you can partake of all these experiences and never say hello to anyone new. And one of the things that all religions do is take groups of strangers into a space and say it is OK to talk to each other.

I'm really puzzled by why people in societies find it difficult to work collaboratively together with other people in societies.

Humans are a social species more than any other, and in order to build a community, which for some reason humans have to do in order to live, we have to solve the communication problem. Language is the tool that was invented to solve that problem.

Gossip is easy, politics is hard.

It's good to have a leader, otherwise we argue too much.

Politics is irrational. Politics is about human beings with their frailties and perversions and distortions or perception, who prioritise things according to their conviction.

The associations inside the group become more important than those outside.