In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- In large groups, conforming to errors is safer than standing alone with correct views.
- In plain terms
- It is safer to follow the crowd even if wrong than to be right alone.
- What can you take from it?
- Social conformity often protects individuals more than truth does.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- When is it worth being right alone?
- How do we reward truth over safety?
Another view
This discourages necessary innovation and ethical courage.
More from John Kenneth Galbraith
Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.
Permalink to quote #45 In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even…
Permalink to quote #47 The huge capacity to purchase submission that goes with any large sum of money, well, this we have. This is a power of which we should all be aware.
Permalink to quote #44
Related quotes
No, gentlemen, if I am to be shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet.
Andrew JohnsonAndrew Johnson quote #3 How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answerin…
Kenneth TynanKenneth Tynan quote #7 It is warm work; and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment. But mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands.
Horatio NelsonHoratio Nelson quote #11