Thomas Carlyle Quotes

If the majority of people were right, we'd be living in paradise. But we are not living in paradise, we are living in hell. What does it mean? That means the majority of people are wrong. So I never believed what people told me.

If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

If you go and talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth on education, of knowledge of understanding what the real issues are and therefore they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they are supposed to think and they keep repeating that until pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.'

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Even intelligent people succumb to their own propaganda.

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

What fundamental biological principle gives the majority the right to think they are preserved from error?

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

I don't think that, you know, adherence to ignorance is really something that encourages voters to support you.

When I left NSA, it was with an understanding that you can never underestimate the power of large numbers of stupid people.

Beware of ignorance when in motion; look out for inexperience when in action, and beware of the majority when mentally poisoned with misinformation, for collective ignorance does not become wisdom.

We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error.

We have a tendency to think everyone's idiotic and everyone's only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There's great truth in that, I suppose, but then it's also not true.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

There's so many lies being told throughout the media and people just run with the lies. They're numb to it. Too many followers, not enough leaders.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.

I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.