On the problems of groups..........

      "Individual men may be moral in the sense that they are able to consider interests of others than their own in determining problems of conduct, and are capable, on occasion, of preferring the advantages of others to their own. ... But all these achievements are more difficult, if not impossible, for human societies and social groups.  In every human group there is less capacity for self transcendence, less ability to comprehend the need of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the groups, reveal in their personal relationships."

-Reinhold Niebuhr,  as excerpted from Moral Man and Immoral Society