Quotes from The Wisdom of Crowds

James Surowiecki ·  306 pages

Rating: (20.3K votes)


“Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.”
― James Surowiecki, quote from The Wisdom of Crowds


“No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.”
― James Surowiecki, quote from The Wisdom of Crowds


“If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom.”
― James Surowiecki, quote from The Wisdom of Crowds


“Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of the wrong, that keeps the group wise.”
― James Surowiecki, quote from The Wisdom of Crowds


“It may be, in the end, that a good society is defined more by how people treat strangers than by how they treat those they know.”
― James Surowiecki, quote from The Wisdom of Crowds



“groups that are too much alike find it harder to keep learning, because each member is bringing less and less new information to the table. Homogeneous groups are great at doing what they do well, but they become progressively less able to investigate alternatives.”
― James Surowiecki, quote from The Wisdom of Crowds


About the author

James Surowiecki
Born place: in Meriden, Connecticut, The United States
Born date April 30, 1967
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Sometimes it’s all you can do,” he murmured. “Fight back; run wild, until you get it all out.”

“Sometimes there is nothing to fight and nowhere to run.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Sea Swept


“But it was only in epic tragedies that gloom was unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy were so intermingled that when one was most wretched ridiculous things happened to make one laugh in spite of oneself”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from A Civil Contract


“teeth. It was her offering which Aivas was rejecting. ‘Of course,’ and she brightened, ‘we could keep some around to study and learn from, couldn’t we?’ She saw the horror and disgust of some of her colleagues. ‘No, I guess we couldn’t. Ah, well, back to microscope. My 98th batch of trials today.”
― Anne McCaffrey, quote from All the Weyrs of Pern


“I thought about the earth then, really thought about it, the tsunami's and earthquakes and volcanoes, all the horrors I haven't witnessed but have changed my life, the lives of everyone I know, all the people I'll never know. I thought about life without the sun, the moon, stars, without flowers and warm days in May. I thought about a year ago and all the good things I'd taken for granted and all the unbearable things that had replaced those simple blessings. And even though I hated the thought of crying in from of Syl, tears streamed down my face.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from This World We Live In


“Sometimes life rocks so hard your heart wants to explode just because the sun came up and you got to feel it on your face for one more day. ...Sometimes you get the bitter end instead.”
― Sarah Ockler, quote from Bittersweet


Interesting books

Three Junes
(38K)
Three Junes
by Julia Glass
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
(43.6K)
Half the Sky: Turnin...
by Nicholas D. Kristof
Entice
(30.2K)
Entice
by Carrie Jones
The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly
(11K)
The Story of a Seagu...
by Luis Sepúlveda
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
(22.2K)
Stalingrad: The Fate...
by Antony Beevor
A Conjuring of Light
(35.2K)
A Conjuring of Light
by V.E. Schwab

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.