Carroll Quigley Quotes

Under perfectly controlled conditions, man and every other organism behaves as it damn well pleases.

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

The social sciences offer equal promise for improving human welfare; our lives can be greatly improved through a deeper understanding of individual and collective behavior. But to realize this promise, the social sciences, like the natural sciences, need to match their institutional structures to today's intellectual challenges.

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.

Unorganized masses … are highly unpredictable in character

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.

Egocentrism appears to us as a form of behavior intermediate between purely individual and socialized behavior.

In all communities you find groups that behave badly. But you must understand them too.

Human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.

Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group.

The evils of mankind are caused, not by the primary aggressiveness of individuals, but by their self-transcending identification with groups whose common denominator is low intelligence and high emotionality.

It is in our collective behavior that we are most mysterious.

I think sociologists are among the best at thinking about emergence, of thinking about the ways that the society is more than the sum of the individuals. And I've found that much of the wisest writing on human social nature comes from sociology and anthropology, not from my own field of social psychology.

A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.

Neurotic behavior is quite predictable. Healthy behavior is unpredictable.

Your group has a right and responsibility to preside over your behavior and you have a responsibility to make that behavior in a manner that does not endanger the group.

No one knows what's next, but everybody does it.

The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer.

Your behavior determines, to some extent, the destiny of your nation and your group.

Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.

Humans are inscrutable. Infinitely unpredictable. This is what makes them dangerous.

I work alone. Humans are incredible, because when you come alone, they will receive you, they accept you, they protect you, they give you all things that you need, and they teach you all things you must know. When you come with two persons or three persons, you have a group in front of them. They don't discuss with the new persons what is important to them.

We do not know how we'd behave. But a lot of people facing fascism didn't become fascists. I don't happen to believe that we are all monsters.

People do whatever they want to do, y'know.

Sure there are a few good whites just as much as there are a few bad Blacks. However what we are concerned here with is group attitudes and group politics. The exception does not make a lie or the rule - it merely substantiates it.