“it’s three strikes and you’re out of the union”
Source: The Ghost Therapist...And Other Grand Delights
“Faced with their confused glances and naive questions, I saw that there indeed was, between the writers and that public, however benevolent and sympathetic, a visible barrier. The audience simply did not have enough background information to comprehend what the writers sitting in front of them on the podium were saying.
Confronted with such a lack of understanding, I felt that I had no other choice but to hang on to 'my' group, the writers from Eastern Europe. At least they knew what I was talking about; at least we understood each other's problems, if that was of any comfort to a single one of us. And in any case, even if I had loudly screamed that I didn't want to belong to any group at all, the audience would have put me with them. Perhaps for the first time I became aware of how tired I was of constantly being pushed back into 'my place' every time I made an attempt to break out of it.”
Source: Café Europa: Life After Communism
“The United groups always overcome scatters.”
“Solidarity is great for a group that needs to work in unison or march into battle. Solidarity engenders trust, teamwork, and mutual aid. But it can also foster groupthink, orthodoxy, and a paralyzing fear of challenging the collective. Solidarity can interfere with a group's efforts to find the truth”
Source: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure
“It is as futile and dangerous to aim at making of society one large family, as sentimental socialism seeks to do, as to aim at making of it one large team, as positivist socialism seeks to do.”
Source: Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good
“Culture is the sum of the values, beliefs and assumptions of human groups.”
Source: Innovation Book, The: How to Manage Ideas and Execution for Outstanding Results
“People in large quantities are terrible.”
Source: Nobody Is Ever Missing
“Inside every group, he decides, there are more groups. Circles within circles, and inside of those, more circles still, all of them infinitely divisible. You could spend your whole life wondering which ones you're in and which ones you're not and which ones really want you and which ones are holes that have no bottom.”
Source: Hall of Small Mammals: Stories
“The being of any group from the point of view of the group members themselves is very curious. If I think of you and him as together with me, and others again as not with me, I have already formed two rudimentary syntheses, namely, We and Them. However, this private act of synthesis is not in itself a group. In order that We come into being as a group, it is necessary not only that I regard, let us say, you and him and me as We, but that you and he also think of us as We. I shall call such an act of experiencing a number of persons as a single collectivity, an act of rudimentary group synthesis.”
“Just been poisoned by my gran. Nothing says Christmas better than familicide and anaphylactic shock.”