"A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually"
About this Quote
Consensus, in Abba Eban's telling, is less a triumph of cooperation than a masterpiece of coordinated dishonesty. The line lands because it flips the warm, civic aura around “consensus” into something closer to diplomatic ventriloquism: a roomful of rational actors manufacturing a statement whose main purpose is to offend no one, commit no one, and reveal nothing. It’s not that people are lying in the crude sense; it’s that they’re laundering disagreement into language so anodyne it becomes believable only as theater.
Eban, a seasoned Israeli diplomat and veteran of the UN’s ritualized speechmaking, knew the genre intimately. In multilateral politics, consensus is often the price of keeping coalitions intact, postponing rupture, or preserving face. The subtext is procedural: when unanimity becomes the goal, substance gets sacrificed to survivability. The group outputs a sentence calibrated to pass, not to persuade. Everyone signs on because everyone assumes everyone else is doing the same math: better a hollow statement than an exposed fracture.
The quote’s sting comes from its psychological accuracy. Collective agreement can become a shield against individual accountability; if no one “owns” the belief, no one can be blamed for its failure. Eban isn’t rejecting compromise so much as warning how institutions convert complex conflict into polished non-positions. Consensus becomes a kind of moral outsourcing: we don’t believe it, but we need it to be said.
Eban, a seasoned Israeli diplomat and veteran of the UN’s ritualized speechmaking, knew the genre intimately. In multilateral politics, consensus is often the price of keeping coalitions intact, postponing rupture, or preserving face. The subtext is procedural: when unanimity becomes the goal, substance gets sacrificed to survivability. The group outputs a sentence calibrated to pass, not to persuade. Everyone signs on because everyone assumes everyone else is doing the same math: better a hollow statement than an exposed fracture.
The quote’s sting comes from its psychological accuracy. Collective agreement can become a shield against individual accountability; if no one “owns” the belief, no one can be blamed for its failure. Eban isn’t rejecting compromise so much as warning how institutions convert complex conflict into polished non-positions. Consensus becomes a kind of moral outsourcing: we don’t believe it, but we need it to be said.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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