There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

West’s aphorism rebukes the assumption that major art must be immediately legible to mass taste or collective “common sense.” By invoking the biblical image of a camel and the eye of a needle, she suggests an absurd, unnecessary ordeal: forcing “great art” to squeeze through the narrow aperture of “mob intelligence” (the simplifying, leveling pressures of crowd opinion). The line defends difficulty, originality, and minority judgment in aesthetics, implying that popular consensus is not a logical or reliable tribunal for artistic value. It also hints at West’s broader skepticism toward herd thinking and her insistence that cultural standards are often set by the most reductive forms of public discourse.