Adlai Stevenson

[ https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II ]

During one of his presidential campaigns, a woman says, "Governor, you have the vote of every thinking person!"

Stevenson replies, "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"

Tim Gowers

[https://gowers.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/is-massively-collaborative-mathematics-possible/
(Seen cited in the Introduction of Tom Malone's book Superminds)]

[Why collaborate?]

(i) Sometimes luck is needed to have the idea that solves a problem. If lots of people think about a problem, then just on probabilistic grounds there is more chance that one of them will have that bit of luck.

(ii) ... different people know different things, so the knowledge that a large group can bring to bear on a problem is significantly greater than the knowledge that one or two individuals will have....

(iii) Different people have different characteristics when it comes to research. Some like to throw out ideas, others to criticize them, others to work out details, others to re-explain ideas in a different language, others to formulate different but related problems, others to step back from a big muddle of ideas and fashion some more coherent picture out of them, and so on....