Bertrand Russell Quotes

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.

Here is a man with the greatest intellect in Europe, and yet he debases it by simply following majorities and the crowd.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinion.

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.

We're all sheep and lemmings to some degree.

A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

I've been amazed at how fast and herd-like opinions in the United States are.

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

When everyone thinks alike, no one is thinking clearly.

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

Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

When a man can take a poll and tell what everybody is thinking, that means nobody is really thinking anymore.

The mob begins to think and reason. Poor reptiles!

The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be rejected; but neither is it to be carelessly echoed.

The human race is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.

People gravitate to what they believe to be popular... Technology is enabling even more of that.

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

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.

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.

Just because everybody else does something isn't a good enough reason to do anything.