Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
A collective entity can exist without erasing the distinctiveness of its individual components.
In plain terms
A group can be bigger than its members without hiding who they are.
What can you take from it?
Respect individual identities within a larger system.

Where it applies

  • team dynamics
  • organizational management
  • societal analysis

Putting it to work

  • build inclusive teams
  • map stakeholder interests
  • design modular systems

Questions to consider

  • How do you maintain individuality in a group?
  • When does the whole overshadow the parts?

Another view

In practice, larger groups often do suppress individual voices due to power dynamics.

More from William O. Douglas

  1. The law is not a series of calculating machines where answers come tumbling out when the right levers are pushed.

    Permalink to quote #2
  2. We have here the problem of bigness. Its lesson should by now have been burned into our memory by Brandeis. The Curse of Bigness shows how size can become a me…

    Permalink to quote #3
  3. Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. Jefferson refused to pin his hopes on the occasional success of honest and unambitious men; on the contrary, the great danger was that philosophers would be lu…

    Daniel J. BoorstinDaniel J. Boorstin quote #9
  2. All my life I have had a certain idea of France.

    Charles de GaulleCharles de Gaulle quote #1
  3. Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every Da-sein has alway…

    Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger quote #1