Lemmings Quotes

• Venture capitalists are like lemmings jumping on the software bandwagon.

  Adam Osborne

  Jumping, Entrepreneur, Decision

  89 Copy quote

• There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Thinking, Migration, Matter

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.194, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs. Splash! There goes Mark Foley!

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Cliffs, Republican, Mark

  "What's That Smell?". www.weeklystandard.com. October 23, 2006.

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• Lemmings with suicide vests. It's kind of an insult to lemmings to call them lemmings, so they'd have to be more than just a lemming, because jumping to your death is not enough.

  Devin Nunes

  Suicide, Jumping, Vests

  57 Copy quote

• How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, 'No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother, I will not participate in this unsavory activity.' Wouldn't world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings?

  Joel Salatin

  Mother, Fire, People

  37 Copy quote

• Many of those engaged in a lemming-like march to the sea are proud of their individualism.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Sea, Proud, March

  28 Copy quote

• Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press

  Warren Buffett

  Business, Groups, Rotten

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.146, John Wiley & Sons

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• There were too many lemmings - that was the core of their difficulty. None wanted solitude, but a crowd of this size was a torment. Being sensitive little beasts, they became overstimulated by superfluous numbers of their own kind. They had tried to escape, but with pitiable irony, all tried to escape together.

  Sally Carrighar

  Numbers, Solitude, Together

  22 Copy quote

• Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.

  Alfred Bester

  Moving, Doubt, World

  "The Stars My Destination". Book by Alfred Bester (Chapter 16), 1957.

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• 'Crowd folly', the tendency of humans, under some circumstances, to resemble lemmings, explains much foolish thinking of brilliant men and much foolish behavior - like investment management practices of many foundations represented here today. It is sad that today each institutional investor apparently fears most of all that its investment practices will be different from practices of the rest of the crowd.

  Charlie Munger

  Men, Thinking, Practice

  "Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor". Book by Tren Griffin, September 15, 2015.

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• I'm not a lemming about to run off the end of a cliff.

  Glenn Roeder

  Running, Cliffs, Ends

  14 Copy quote

• A pack of lemmings looks like a group of rugged individualists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth.

  Warren Buffett

  Wall, Business, Groups

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• We’ve always assumed The Aegis is all-knowing highly trained and organized but it’s nothing but a cult, isn’t it ? The weak and uneducated being led by those with their own agendas. Brainwashed lemmings following orders without question.

  Larissa Ione

  Order, Knowing, Agendas

  11 Copy quote

• The day should come when all of the forms of life... will stand before the court - the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams.

  William O. Douglas

  Animal, Woodpeckers, Bears

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• So I'd much rather get across the concept of freedom. It's what's important to Indian children. The only way you can be free is to know is that you are worthwhile as a distinct human being. Otherwise you become what the colonizers have designed, and that is a lemming. Get in line, punch all the right keys, and die.

  Russell Means

  Children, Keys, Important

  51 Copy quote

• Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays. From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

  Elton John

  Gay, Views, People

  11 Copy quote

• What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.

  Ben Horowitz

  Sheep, Venture, Herds

  4 Copy quote

• I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

  Elton John

  Beautiful, Jesus, Book

  "When Elton met Jake". Interview with Jake Shears, www.theguardian.com. August 21, 2006.

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• I believed that lemmings really jump off of cliffs.

  Cassandra Peterson

  Cliffs

  "Elvira on her date with Elvis and the fish recipe she got from Vincent Price". Interview with Katie Rife, aux.avclub.com. October 5, 2016.

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• The male has paid a heavy price for his masculine 'privilege' and power. He is out of touch with his emotions and his body. He is playing by the rules of the male game plan and with lemming-like purpose he is destroying himself-emotionally, psychologically and physically.

  Herb Goldberg

  Games, Males, Purpose

  8 Copy quote

• There is a wilful lemming-like persistance in remaking past successes time after time. They can't make them as good as they are in our memories, but they go on doing them and each time it's a disaster. Why don't we remake some of our bad pictures - I'd love another shot at 'Roots of Heaven' - and make them good?

  John Huston

  Memories, Past, Roots

  9 Copy quote

• The press heralded this as a major accomplishment. The rush from the press as soon as it was announced suggested a high level of coordination. Like lemmings in a staged dive off a cliff, 'historic' became the media's rallying cry. There is nothing historic about the deal. In fact, news reports from November 2012 noted that China expected, in 2012, that its carbon emissions would begin to decline after 2030 because of factory upgrades, efficiencies, etc.

  Erick Erickson

  Media, Rallying Cry, Carbon Emissions

  Erick Erickson (2016). “The Wrong Type of Values”, p.60, Creators Publishing

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• Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.

  Alfred Bester

  Freak, Life Is, Glory

  "The Stars My Destination". Book by Alfred Bester (Chapter 16, p. 251), 1957.

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• Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can .Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band - In Praise of Lemmings.

  Boy George

  Band, Firsts, Influential

  "Taboo". Interview with Mark Ronson, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 19, 2008.

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• I've probably said a million times in my life something about, "All those people are just lemmings. They'd follow each other off a cliff." Well, no such thing.

  Cassandra Peterson

  People, Cliffs, Said

  "Elvira on her date with Elvis and the fish recipe she got from Vincent Price". Interview with Katie Rife, aux.avclub.com. October 5, 2016.

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