Quotes & Sayings About Following Crowds

No one achieves great things by following the crowd. Have a spine. Strike your own path. — Robert Kiyosaki

He laughed. "What's to say? Great paintings - people flock to see them, they draw crowds, they're reproduced endlessly on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything-you-like. And, I count myself in the following, you can have a lifetime of perfectly sincere museum-going where you traipse around enjoying everything and then go out and have some lunch. But - " crossing back to the table to sit again " - if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think, 'oh, I love this picture because it's universal.' 'I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.' That's not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It's a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you." Fingertip gliding over the faded-out photo - the conservator's touch, a touch-without-touching, a communion wafer's space between the surface and his forefinger. — Donna Tartt

Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders. — John Holt

If everyone you knew jumped off a bridge, would you too? Dr. Roger asked.
David had heard this before and knew you were supposed to say no. But was that really true? If everyone jumped off a bridge, maybe there was a good reason. Maybe the bridge was on fire.If anything, the guy who didn't jump was the crazy one. — John M. Cusick

After following the crowd for a while, I'd then go 180 degrees in the exact opposite direction. It always worked for me. — Elliott Erwitt

The only certainty about following the crowd is that you will all get there together. — Mychal Wynn

A few days before the [Mr. America] contest we heard rumors about a man who had throngs of people following him along the Lake Michigan Beach front, and we couldn't imagine who could draw crowds by merely walking along the beach! — George Eiferman

When a long-term trend loses it's momentum, short-term volatility tends to rise. It is easy to see why that should be so: the trend-following crowd is disoriented. — George Soros

This is why Jesus told people to count the cost of following Him. When great crowds would gather to see and hear Him, He knew that many were there for the show. They didn't want to hear Jesus say, "deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me." Many were not ready for Jesus to tell them that unless they were willing to give up everything they had, they were not worthy to be His disciples (Luke 14:33). Jesus wanted everyone to re-think their enthusiasm for Him. — Francis Chan

Advice ... is a habit-forming drug. You give a dear friend a bit of advice today, and next week you find yourself advising two or three friends, and the week after, a dozen, and the week following, crowds! — Carolyn Wells

[People] ask themselves, what is suitable for my position? What is usually done by persons of my station and percuniary circumstances? Or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclinations. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things that are commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. — John Stuart Mill

Christ had no interest in gathering vast crowds of professed adherents who would melt away as soon as they found out what following Him actually demanded of them. In our own presentation of Christ's gospel, therefore, we need to lay a similar stress on the cost of following Christ and make sinners face it soberly before we urge them to respond to the message of free forgiveness. In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness in one sense will cost everything. — J.I. Packer

Chances are, if you are following the crowd, you're following the wrong path. — Bob Proctor

The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd. — Benjamin Graham

It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow. — John Stuart Mill