Hirohito Quotes

I don't like being surrounded by yes men.

It's very scary to me that people actually think we should just follow our leaders. If we can't learn from our history, we're nowhere.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's need to think.

Baseball regards us as sheep.

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

Those who know the least obey the best.

The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.

The hazing experience and then the subsequent participation in the group forces its members to maintain the status quo and traditions at all costs. It demands mindlessness and unquestioned loyalty, resulting in boring people who have little ability to think for themselves or have an opposing viewpoint from those who have the most social power.

The undignified mania of adaptive conformity, exhibited by many of my kinsmen, has always been very repulsive to me.

When we find ourselves in groups or with charismatic individuals, we might do things we wouldn't ordinarily do.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.

I am a collaborator with everyone who agrees that I need to be in control. I happily collaborate with my loyalists.

One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That's why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals.

Activities that seem to represent choices are often inert reproductions of accepted practice.

By pushing children and wanting quick success, parents are producing followers, not leaders.

The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.

I'm afraid Japanese people tend to collective hysteria.

I am a believer and a conformist.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

It becomes us, therefore, to be contented, and dutiful subjects.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

There are people in this servile world who will endure any trampling, and at the first beck rush delightedly to proffer their assistance.

We are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much.

Frankly, I wouldn't put anything past him [Nixon] and those damn technocrats. You can't begin to compete with the professional Nixonites when it comes to deception.... If Nixon told them to nationalize the railroads, they'd have nationalized the railroads. If he'd told them to exterminate the Jews, they'd have exterminated the Jews.