William James, in a letter to Mrs. Henry Whitman dated June 7, 1899 (HT: Zena Hitz, who offered it as the concluding epigraph to her wonderful Lost in Thought:The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life):

As for me, my bed is made: I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of men’s pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, long after they are dead, and puts them on the top.

I one thousand percent endorse this sentiment. If there were a petition with these words, I would sign it. If a campaign with this slogan (admittedly not the most catchy), I’d support it. If a charity with this mission, I’d give to it. I make it my mission to oppose bigness and greatness in all their forms.