Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.
ATTRIBUTION:
Walt Whitman (1819–1892), U.S. poet. “An Interviewer’s Item,” Specimen Days and Collect (1882).
