Consensus Quotes - Page 14

• It is one thing for the institution to offer space for serious engagement, in thought and action, and to encourage free and independent use of such opportunities; it is something else for the university to become engaged as an institution, beyond a fairly narrow range where true consensus exists, and even that raises questions.

  Noam Chomsky

  Independent, Opportunity, Raises Questions

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• Barack Obama is the kind of guy who likes to do things by inches, he's the kind of guy who likes to build consensus and compromise.

  Anna Quindlen

  Guy, Likes, Compromise

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• Part of what you need to understand is that we're forced to look back. You had the importation of third world or developing world conditions into the United States because of a bipartisan elite consensus for neo-liberalism. In other words, you had both political parties, the smarty-pants in both political parties said, hey, let's do these crazy trade deals.

  Van Jones

  Crazy, Party, Political

  Source: pen.org

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• Put yourself in the shoes of one of these oligarchs who has been given a gift of $10 billion. Russia is in a deep depression. Nobody's investing. There is a widespread political consensus that the way you got your wealth is illegitimate.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Political, Wealth

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• I'm not a specialist in the science but I have followed it fairly closely and it seems to me that there is among the experts a clear consensus that potential climate change is something to worry about.

  Martin Rees

  Worry, Climate, Experts

  "Lord Martin Rees, eminent British scientist". "Sunday Profile" with Monica Attard, www.abc.net.au. March 28, 2010.

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• Consensus is usually made possible by vague language and shallow commitments.

  Mason Cooley

  Commitment, Language, Shallow

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• The role of the comedian is to say 'Wait a minute' when a consensus starts to form.

  Bill Hicks

  Waiting, Comedian, Roles

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• I don't think you can pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere indefinitely and not have a reaction. But there are great scientists such as Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of the last hundred years, who has studied the question, who believes quite the opposite. The reason transnational action is so difficult is because the major problem with climate change is, A, that there is no consensus, and, B, that the economic cost is simply staggering. Reversing it completely might mean undoing the modern industrial economy.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  "Obama Is Average". Interview with Klaus Brinkbäumer and Gregor-Peter Schmitz, www.spiegel.de. October 26, 2009.

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• A thoughtful investment process contemplates both probability and payoffs and carefully considers where the consensus - as revealed by a price - may be wrong. Even though there are also some important features that make investing different than, say, a casino or the track, the basic idea is the same: you want the positive expected value on your side

  Michael Mauboussin

  Thoughtful, Your Side, Ideas

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• There's this belief that some things can be taken seriously in an intellectual way, while some things are only entertainment or only a commodity. Or there's some kind of critical consensus that some things are "good," and some things are garbage, throwaway culture. And I think the difference between them, in a lot of ways, is actually much less than people think. Especially when you get down to how they affect the audience.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Taken, Thinking, Differences

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. November 15, 2006.

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• Even in a largely depoliticized society such as the United States, with no political parties or opposition press beyond the narrow spectrum of the business-dominated consensus, it is possible for populate action to have a significant impact on policy, though indirectly. That was an important lesson for the Indochina Wars.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Party, Impact

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• What happens in our lives is not really anybody's fault but our own... When I was in high school, I was in an atheist crowd, and it was the consensus that religion was a crutch.

  Gillian Anderson

  Atheist, School, Crowds

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• We've had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington's second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president.

  William J. Clinton

  America, President, Firsts

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• The issue has two dimensions. One is the legal dimension and the other one is the issue at the realpolitik. [In the] legal realm, we believe in equal rights for all people in all nations. If Israel, the United States, Russia, Pakistan, other countries, China, have the right to have a nuclear program and nuclear bomb, Iran, too, must have that same right. Now, at the realm of realpolitik, because there is a global consensus against Iran, and because there are all manner of dangers facing Iran, I am opposed to this program.

  Akbar Ganji

  Country, Believe, Two

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• This is the deadening consensus that crosses party lines, that dominates our major media, and that is strangling the liberty and prosperity that were once the birthright of Americans. Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic. Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

  Ron Paul

  Lying, Party, Media

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• Without the triggers, that tax cut is irreponsible fiscal policy. Eventually, I think that will be the consensus view.

  Alan Greenspan

  Cutting, Thinking, Views

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• There are dangers in consensus: it could be an attempt to satisfy people holding no particular views about anything. ... No great party can survive except on the basis of firm beliefs about what it wants to do.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Party, Views, People

  Margaret Thatcher (1997). “The collected speeches of Margaret Thatcher”, HarperCollins

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• The hardest thing over the years has been having the courage to go against the dominant wisdom of the time to have a view that is at variance with the present consensus and bet that view. The hard part is that the investor must measure himself not by his own perceptions of his performance, but by the objective measure of the market. The market has its own reality. In an immediate emotional sense the market is always right so if you take a variant point of view you will always be bombarded for some time by conventional wisdom as expressed by the market.

  Michael Steinhardt

  Reality, Emotional, Views

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• Democracy begins in human conversation. A democratic conversation does not require elaborate rules of procedure or utopian notions of perfect consensus. What it does require is a spirit of mutual respect-people conversing critically with one another in an atmosphere of honesty and shared regard.

  William Greider

  Honesty, People, Perfect

  William Greider (1992). “Who will tell the people: the betrayal of American democracy”

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• Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.

  Bill Gates

  Goal, Poverty, Helping

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• We have been engaging the Government of Swaziland for some time on this issue of the democratization of Swaziland. In particular, I had asked the Deputy President to engage the Government on this and, indeed, he has. We will continue to do this, because we do think that, as has been communicated to the Government of Swaziland, that Swaziland must go through this democratization process, a constitution-making process in which they have been engaged for some time, and really seek a national consensus about it.

  Thabo Mbeki

  Thinking, Government, Issues

  Source: www.gov.za

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• Heidi Cullen had said that all of these local and cable weather forecasters who have been certified by the AMS, the American Meteorological Society, should be decertified if they refuse to accept the proven science of man-made global warming. There are numerous credible scientists, who have not been convinced that this is anything other than sunspot activity or normal cycles that the earth has gone through for billions and billions and billions and billions of years. Science can't prove man-made global warming, they simply can't, so they come up with this notion of consensus.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Earth, Global Warming, Scientist

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• ONE MORE CHNCE. Words that my mother heard, more than once. Words that women debate. Whether you CAN forgive and whether you SHOULD trust. I think of all the judgment from society, friends, and family, the overwhelming consensus seeming to be that you should not grant someone who betrayed you a second chance. That you should do everything you can to keep the knife out of your back, and to protect your heart and pride. Cowards give second chances. Fools give second chances. And I am no coward, no fool.

  Emily Giffin

  Mother, Heart, Pride

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• Fire, ice, asteroids and pole shifts are bogeymen with which we distract ourselves from the real threat of our time. In an age when everyone invents his own truth, there is no community, only factions. Without community, there can be no consensus to resist the greedy, the envious, the power-mad narcissists who seize control and turn the institutions of civilization into a series of doom machines.

  Dean Koontz

  Real, Ice, Civilization

  Dean Koontz (2009). “Relentless: A Novel”, p.266, Bantam

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• Now, in practice, in daily social interactions, etc., there may be all kinds of biases and prejudices that are unspoken, that people aren't aware of, that affect who's hired, and who gets loans, and how kids are treated in school. But it's a powerful thing if you have on your side an idea that the overwhelming majority of people believe in because that's how you can build a consensus that's lasting.

  Barack Obama

  Powerful, Believe, School

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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