Bigness Quotes

The history of American art, in a way, begins with Jackson Pollock and his big paintings. This theme of bigness - all painters and sculptors have dealt with it ever since.

In the U.S., everything is big - it's like looking through a magnifying glass.

The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

… too big to jail

there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.

here in Texas maybe we've got into the habit of confusing bigness with greatness.

Overly concentrated power, whether in public, private or even in civic hands is an invitation to abuse.

The bigger the better; in everything.

The chances of catastrophe grow as organizations grow in number and size, and as internal communications become more time consuming and less intelligible.

To be compassionate is not a joke. It's not that simple. One has to discover a certain bigness in oneself. That bigness should be centered on oneself, not in terms of money, not in terms of power you wield, not in terms of any status that you can command in the society, but it should be centered on oneself.

A week ago it was the mountains I thought the most wonderful, and today it's the plains. I guess it's the feeling of bigness in both that carries me away.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word "Infinite". Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.

We Americans are trained to think big, talk big, act big, love big, admire bigness but then the essential mystery is in the small.

It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.

At a distance this fine oak seems to be of ordinary size. But if I place myself under its branches, the impression changes completely: I see it as big, and even terrifying in its bigness.

Bigness is better.

the more our societies grow, the more important trust becomes and the harder it is to build. And that is a paradox of modern societies.

When you're in the desert, you look into infinity.... It makes you feel terribly small, and also in a strange way, quite big.

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.

If you call anything “big government”, Americans will be against it reflexively.

Following World War II, the world mostly shared values about human rights, democracy and so forth. Many believed then that Western liberal ideas would be universal. But today it is not the case that we share the same values. If you look at Russia, China, Turkey—and even inside our societies—people have different concepts about how to organize big societies. Typically in Western society, the individual is protected against the collective. But increasingly, the collective is protected against the individual. And even inside our own society, the question arises more and more about how much should you defend the collective against the individual? What is the right balance?

Yes, my fellow citizens, despite what the original Constitution of the United States says about the qualifications for statehood and the guarantee of representation in Congress, by every measure that truly matters in America (bigness, crowdedness, awesomeness, Texasness), Nebraska doesn't deserve its star on the American flag.

This theme of bigness — all painters and sculptors have dealt with it ever since.

[Louis] Brandeis, like [Tomas] Jefferson, is an equal opportunity critic of bigness. And he, like Jefferson, sees American history as this incredible clash between small producers, farmers, and small business people on the one hand, and wicked oligarchs and financiers and monopolists on the other.

The concern that you have raised is one that I frankly share. And I'm not talking about HSBC now, because that may not be appropriate. But I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.