Walter Gilbert Quotes

There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion.

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality.

Weak minds think alike.

All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.

If obedience is the result of the instinct of the masses, revolt is the result of their thought.

If the majority holds some thing of value, you can be certain it has none.

Why the critics, like a flock of ducks, always move in perfect unison: Their authority with the public depends upon an appearance of unanimous agreement. One dissenting voice would shatter the whole fragile structure.

There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.

On social media there's this thing where on many occasions, there's a single proscribed way of acting. Like if somebody dies, everyone has to say "R.I.P.! R.I.P.!" Basically they're saying, "Don't hurt me, I'm a good person."

There is nothing so wrong as accepting a thing merely because men who have done things say it should be so.

It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.

What makes this mentality dangerous is that when the team is held together by careerism and mindless partisanship, individual members are punished for thinking for themselves.

It is easier going out of the way when we are in, than going in when we are out.

Never follow a follower who is following someone who has fallen. Its why the whole world is falling apart.

For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.

Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

The left are afraid of independent thinkers. They are afraid of people who are able to reason and think on their own.

Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.

Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism.

That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things.

But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!

The more defensive a society, the more conformist.

The expression "following suit" is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river, for instance, and you jumped in right after them, you would be following suit. You can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first.

Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying.