Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

People watch movies - and it's vague ideas, it's vague notions, but people pick up on these things, that they are supposed to think certain ways or that they're not supposed to think, basically, and they don't.

Popular opinion is the biggest 'filter' for most people - they don't have to try something if they've already been told it's not cool.

There are many people for whom 'thinking' necessarily means identifying with existing trends.

We were born in this society, we grew up in this society. And we learn to be like everyone else, playing nonsense all the time.

The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.

People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. they did not give or ask for reasons.

The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.

Most people suspend their judgment till somebody else has expressed his own and then they repeat it.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

I believe people think as a group more often than we might realize or care to admit. We like to believe that we act as individuals and nothing more, but time and again - in corporations and business, in politics and religion, in fashion and culture, and in friendships and social circles - we think and do as one.

All of us, more than we recognize, are products of the thinking around us. And much of this thinking is little, not big.

When in doubt, look at what everyone else is doing.

We're constantly being fed images and being told what to like and what is good, and for the most part, I think people enjoy living that way. It takes a lot of the thinking out of it.

I was a bandwagon jumper. If everybody in high school listened to it, so did I.

Online, you're trying to appeal to everyone and people who you don't know at the same time. So I think, as a side effect, it amplifies the desire for groupthink.

Too bad your inner sheep never forgets to follow.

So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.

Hackberry Holland's greatest fear was his fellow man's propensity to act collectively, in militaristic lockstep, under the banner of God and country. Mobs did not rush across town to do good deeds, and in Hackberry's view, there was no more odious taint on any social or political endeavor than universal approval.

Our desire to conform is greater than our respect for objective facts.

In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking.

Of what use is it to please the herd? They are simply coarse animals - for all that is admirable in man is the artificial product of special breeding.

We must dress according to the dictates of fashion, make love whether we feel like it or not, kill in the name of our country, wish time away so that retirement comes more quickly, elect politicians, complain about the cost of living, change our hairstyle, criticize anyone who's different, go to a religious service and beg forgiveness for our sins and puff ourselves up with pride because we know the truth and despise the other tribe who worships a false god.

We're all sheep and lemmings to some degree.

Men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation.