“Group minds are a result of collective discussion and working out of a consensus, which can be listened to (unlike an unreadable mind). Arriving at a common program of action often leaves physical traces, such as meeting minutes and programmatic documents. Of course, some groups are quite secretive about their inner decision-making processes. Here’s where
whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden become essential for a sociologist of power.”
Source: End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
“Since every country stands in numerous and various relations with the other countries of the world, and many, our own among the number, exercise actual authority over some of these, a knowledge of the established rules of international morality is essential to the duty of every nation, and therefore of every person in it who helps to make up the nation, and whose voice and feeling form a part of what is called public opinion. Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. It depends on the habit of attending to and looking into public transactions, and on the degree of information and solid judgment respecting them that exists in the community, whether the conduct of the nation as a nation, both within itself and towards others, shall be selfish, corrupt, and tyrannical, or rational and enlightened, just and noble.”
Source: Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867
“WHATEVER LOGICAL IS REAL AND WHATEVER FACTUAL IS ACTUAL”
“As economists like to say, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data.”
Source: You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity
“In grammar, as in war, there is strength in numbers.”
Source: Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism
“Lord, you are so good, and your love holds everything together.”
Source: The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip
“Believe what you wish, but prove what you can.”
“If our ideas are not evolving with verifiable evidence, they are not reliable ideas.”
Source: Two Princes And A King: A Concise Review of Three Political Assassinations
“Gen. Scott saw more through the eyes of his staff officers than through his own.”
Source: The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace
“They made strategy at 33,000 feet (on) the campaign plane.”
Source: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus