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Unfortunately, unanimity is not always feasible.
Sep 29, 2025
Unanimity is always stupid.
There is great unanimity among the dissolute. [Lat., Magna inter molles concordia.]
But doing what I do, you will never get unanimity of people.
You only find complete unanimity in a cemetary.
Unanimity is the mistress of strength.
You see, party labels do not ensure unanimity any more than trying to cast the challenge we confront as a people through a partisan prism.
There was one issue on which there seemed to be almost unanimity: the Internet should not be managed by any government, national or multinational.
It is idle to await unanimity.
I don't think leadership demands yes or no answers; I think leadership is providing the forum for making the right decision, which doesn't demand unanimity.
Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.
As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs.
I think we Americans tend to put too high a price on unanimity, as if there were something dangerous and illegitimate about honest differences of opinion honestly expressed by honest men.
The Democratic Party has always been a party that is not known for its unanimity.
I've never found an important decision made by a great organization that was made at a point of unanimity. Significant decisions carry risks and inevitably some will oppose it. In these settings, the great legislative leader must be artful in handling uncomfortable decisions, and this requires rigor.
In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking.
As a corporation, you cannot let the desire for unanimity override your obligation for fairness.
The lion shall never lie down with the lamb. The lion eternally shall devour the lamb, the lamb eternally shall be devoured. Man knows the great consummation in the flesh, the sensual ecstasy, and that is eternal. Also the spiritual ecstasy of unanimity, that is eternal. But the two are separate and never to be confused.
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.
The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.
Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.
Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system.
Doctrines like Christianity or Islam or Marxism require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions.
I have lately obtained the opinion of a number of Chief Constables, who declare with almost complete unanimity that the recent great increase in juvenile delinquency is, to a considerable extent, due to demoralising cinematograph films.
Music creates order out of chaos.
Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Radical views that are outside the mainstream generally (but not always) are more reliable than the dominant view because they are more regularly challenged and tested against evidence. They do not get to float freely down the mainstream; they must swim against the current. They cannot rest on the orthodox power to foreclose dissent, and they are not supported by the unanimity of bias that passes for objectivity.
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
What we need to do in this PC world is forget about unanimity of speech and unanimity of thought and we need to concentrate on being respectful of those people with whom we disagree.
The 'Big Green Debate' has entered a very interesting stage. Once there was endless controversy; now there is near unanimity. Once there was universal political indifference; now the bandwagon is abrim with politicians in catch-up mode. Once the media were semi-detached: now they're really getting stuck in. And they need to be! Many people are confused and disempowered, and the role of the media in getting then informed and engaged is critical
Economists' unanimity that bad business is ahead is the most reassuring news possible. It's very unlikely that this will be the one time they're right.
There are certain aspects, and there are - there are 15 attributes of winners and winning slogans. "Which side are you on" sounds divisive, that you're on one side or the other, at a time when we actually want universality. We want unanimity.
You will permit me to say, that a greater drama is now acting on this theatre than has heretofore been brought on the American tage, or any other in the world. We exhibit at present the novel and astonishing spectacle of a whole people deliberating calmly on what form of government will be most conducive to their happiness; and deciding with an unexpected degree of unanimity in favour of a system which they conceive calculated to answer the purpose.
Epistemology now flourishes with various complementary approaches. This includes formal epistemology, experimental philosophy, cognitive science and psychology, including relevant brain science, and other philosophical subfields, such as metaphysics, action theory, language, and mind. It is not as though all questions of armchair, traditional epistemology are already settled conclusively, with unanimity or even consensus. We still need to reason our way together to a better view of those issues.
History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents.... A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.
...convince all nuclear powers, including those which have been more reluctant up to now, of the necessity to respect the "vital interests" of all peoples and to become fully aware of the profound truth of the following conclusion which the United Nations approved by unanimity four years ago: "Mankind is confronted with a choice: we must halt the arms race and proceed to disarmament or face annihilation".
It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astr
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.
But there are a couple of places where it is clear to me that there should be no ambiguity of corporate responsibility - the environment and civil rights, .. As a corporation, you cannot let the desire for unanimity override your obligation for fairness.
The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted [in the federal convention], and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.
Where they do agree on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful.
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
We do not seek the unanimity that comes to those who water down all issues to the lowest common denominator - or to those who conceal their differences behind fixed smiles - or to those who measure unity by standards of popularity and affection, instead of trust and respect. We are allies. This is a partnership, not an empire. We are bound to have differences and disappointments - and we are equally bound to bring them out into the open, to settle them where they can be settled, and to respect each other's views when they cannot be settled.
No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.
For black America needs a politics whose first mission isn't the reinforcement of the idea of black America; and a discourse of race that isn't centrally concerned with preserving the idea of race and racial unanimity. We need something we don't yet have: a way of speaking about black poverty that doesn't falsify the reality of black advancement; a way of speaking about black advancement that doesn't distort the enduring realities of black poverty.
It is often hard to secure unanimity about the borders of legislative power, but that is much easier than to decide how far a particular adjustment diverges from what the judges deem tolerable. On such issues experience has over and over again shown the difficulty of securing unanimity. This is disastrous because disunity cancels the impact of monolithic solidarity on which the authority of a bench of judges so largely depends.
Contemporary Christianity, diverse and complex as we find it, actually may show more unanimity than the Christian churches of the first and second centuries. For nearly all Christians since that time, Catholics, Protestants, or Orthodox, have shared three basic premises. First, they accept the canon of the New Testament; second, they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specific forms of church institution. But every one of these - the canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure - emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century.
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