Consensus Quotes

• A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Leadership

  An address at the Episcopal National Cathedral, Washington D.C, March 31, 1968.

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• Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

  Michael Crichton

  Literature, Belief, Scientist

  "Aliens Cause Global Warming". Caltech Michelin's Lecture at the California Institute of Technology, January 17, 2003.

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• A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.

  Abba Eban

  Sarcastic, Believe, Mean

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• To me consensus seems to be - the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects - the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner "I stand for consensus"?

  Margaret Thatcher

  Motivational, Inspiring, Leadership

  Margaret Thatcher's speech at 1981 Sir Robert Menzies lecture at Blackwood Hall of Monash University in Melbourne, www.margaretthatcher.org. October 6, 1981.

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• Genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached, thinking stops. Stop nodding your head.

  Albert Einstein

  Thinking, Genius, Nodding

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• If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.

  Winston Churchill

  Team, Two, People

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• To me consensus seems to be - the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Powerful, Believe, Principles

  Margaret Thatcher's speech at 1981 Sir Robert Menzies lecture at Blackwood Hall of Monash University in Melbourne, www.margaretthatcher.org. October 6, 1981.

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• Consensus doesn't happen by magic... You have to drive to it.

  Christine Quinn

  Magic, Happens

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• But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you've got to compromise. You've got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.

  Colin Powell

  Country, Moving, Writing

  "Bayh Indictment of Washington Causes Little Soul Searching". www.foxnews.com. February 21, 2010.

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• Consensus is the negation of leadership.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Leadership, Negation

  "Los Angeles Times Interview : Margaret Thatcher : The Lady's Not Made for Ducking a Tough Question". Los Angeles Times Interview, articles.latimes.com. November 28, 1993.

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• Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Moving, Opposites, Heaven

  Nicolaus Copernicus (1978). “On the revolutions”

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• Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

  Michael Crichton

  Matter, Way, Firsts

  "Aliens Cause Global Warming". A lecture at the California Institute of Technology, January 17, 2003.

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• Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.

  Michael Crichton

  Enough, Skepticism, Situation

  "Aliens Cause Global Warming". Caltech Michelin Lecture, January 17, 2003.

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• Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Global Warming, Obstinacy, Fashionable

  "Empowering girls is about rights, not just economics" by Tanya Barron, www.theguardian.com. January 25, 2014.

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• Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide collaboration, cooperation and consensus.

  Simon Mainwaring

  Collaboration, Cooperation, Impossible

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• That is where consensus-building begins-with the idea that you have your own truth, but that the negotiator on the other side of the table has his own truth as well.

  Harri Holkeri

  Consensus Building, Ideas, Tables

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• Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.

  Abba Eban

  Believe, People, Belief

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• Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

  Michael Crichton

  Literature, Matter, Way

  "Consensus Science and the Peer Review" by Jorge R. Barrio, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. April 28, 2009.

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• Consensus is the absence of leadership.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Absence

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• My job will not be easy but I am convinced the problems will be solved in a quicker and more efficient way if there is unity and consensus.

  Lucas Papademos

  Jobs, Unity, Way

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• Here’s someone who says there’s no such thing, it’s all intelligent design. How sure am I of my own views? Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you’re bound to be okay, because you’re in the safely moral majority.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Refuge, Security

  "Christopher Hitchens: 'Freedom of speech means freedom to hate'". blog.skepticallibertarian.com. September 30, 2014.

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• Indeed, scientific truth by consensus has had a uniformly bad history.

  David Douglass

  Scientific Truth

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• There is no consensus, there is no homogeneity, there is no truth.

  Ward Churchill

  Homogeneity

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• Avoid committees and consensus in developing big, distinctive business model advantages. Individuals have big, distinctive ideas; committees and consensus turn big, distinctive ideas into mundane ideas.

  Bob Herbold

  Inspirational, Ideas, Individual

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• How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.

  Steven Weinberg

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Science

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