Alexander Pope Quotes

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

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

Most people live their life around what other people do.

Men are herd animals, and prefer to go with the flow, especially when moving in the other direction is harsh.

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

Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?

Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.

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."

Just because so many conforming kids wake up every morning asking, 'What is everybody else going to wear today?' doesn't mean that they don't wish it were different. Peer pressure is just that: pressure.

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

The highest state is laughter.

I love to laugh and well, who doesn't?

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.

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

A big element of what they regard as conformity is simply a desire to have an audience.

The world chooses to think what the world thinks.

Most of us are 'ultraconformists' when it comes to who we are most likely to follow... to socialise with, or even who we are most likely to hire.

I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

Better be wrong with the many than right with the few.

The multitude is always in the wrong.

When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.

What the multitude says is so, or soon will be.