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For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.

People's intelligence tends to be in inverse proportion to their number. People don't tend to get smarter as they get into bigger groups.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

From the lowest animals of which we can affirm intelligence up to man this type of intellect is found.

Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

For a crowd to be smart, the people in it need to be not only diverse in their perspectives but also, relatively speaking, independent of each other. In other words, you need people to be thinking for themselves, rather than following the lead of those around them.

The usefulness of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present.