“Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.” PeopleThinkingMenWayHas BeensArtSometimesLiteratureIndividualLeaderMassAccountsAverageDepartmentImmenseSuperiorityGreat LeaderExhibitsLiterature And Art Book:Prose Works 1892: Speciman Days Source: Prose Works 1892: Speciman Days
“Responsibility and danger do not tend to free or stimulate the average person's mind- rather the contrary; but wherever they do liberate an individual's judgement and confidence we can be sure that we are in the presence of exceptional ability.” MindPersonsIndividualAbilityResponsibilityDangerAverageContraryJudgementExceptionalAverage Person Book:On War Source: On War
“It is common, and encouraged by many journals, for research to be judged by the impact factor of the journal that publishes it. But as a journal's score is an average, it says little about the quality of any individual piece of research.” LittlesIndividualCommonQualityPiecesResearchImpactAverageFactorsScoreJudgedJournalPublish Author:Randy Schekman
“The average individual spends many, many lifetimes meditating and seeking and chewing bubblegum and doing things like that to attain the experience of samadhi.” IndividualLifetimeAverageSeekingMeditatingSamadhiChewing Author:Frederick Lenz
“But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts.” MenMindIndividualBrainGroupsAverageIndividualityCompromiseCollectivesAgreementAttributesFountainheadCollective Consciousness Book:Ayn Rand Reader Source: Ayn Rand Reader
“There is nothing in the education of the average non-scientific human being to discourage him from the habit of generalizing from little or no evidence, and worse still and far more important, nothing to discourage him from the habit of starting with a generalization and ending up with the individual, instead of the other way round.” WayHumansLittlesStillsImportantIndividualHuman BeingsHabitEvidenceRoundsStartingAverageDiscouragingGeneralization Book:Earth and High Heaven Source: Earth and High Heaven
“I think we need to find a way to provide people with a reason that the average man on the street can grasp and embrace, that would cause him to move away from the centuries-old idea of the individual and individualism, and move toward a different concept of what it means to be human in a collective society. Unless he has that reason, unless he has a fundamental reason to do that, it's going to be very difficult to cause him to make that shift, in my view.” PeopleThinkingMenWayNeedsHumansMeanIdeasDifferentReasonMovingIndividualCausesDifficultViewsStreetsCenturyConceptsFundamentalsEmbraceAverageCollectivesIndividualismAverage ManOld IdeasWhat It Means To Be Human Author:Neale Donald Walsch