Charles McC. Mathias Jr. Quotes

I do sometimes feel like I function within an echo chamber and I'm just kind of preaching to the choir.

If you're keeping yourself in the bubble and only looking at your own data or only watching the TV that fits your agenda then it gets boring.

When you're surrounded by people who share the same set of assumptions as you, you start to think that's reality.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.

Talking with people who agree with you is like jogging in a cul de sac.

Politicians are trapped in their own views.

Who wants to hear that he is wrong when he can be told that he is right? …. We are losing the ability to change our mind because of our media.

Political experts aren’t a very diverse group and tend to place a lot of faith in the opinions of other experts and other members of the political establishment. Once a consensus view is established, it tends to reinforce itself until and unless there’s very compelling evidence for the contrary position. Social media, especially Twitter, can amplify the groupthink further... .

To exist in an echo chamber and only talk to people with whom we agree is fruitless.

When people silo themselves by belief, only affiliating with like-minded media organizations and people, we lose the opportunity for genuine conversation, much less persuasion.

If you go to certain cable news shows, you're generally going to hear the viewpoints that you already have reported back to you. I think there's no harm in that.

One thing about liberals: It doesn't even occur to them that there is another side to an argument. They are so convinced of the righteousness of their own position that it doesn't dawn on them that a reasonable person might have a different viewpoint.

If you have a pre-conceived idea of the world, you edit information. When it leads you down a certain road, you don't challenge your own beliefs.

Life inside the Beltway bubble dulls your thinking.

As people's opportunities to succumb to confirmation bias increases online - only seeking out information that confirms their prejudices - ignorance, extremism and close-mindedness have continued to rise unabated.

People of a certain political view tend to read material of only that point of view … except to cast contempt on the other points of view.

Ideological amplification happens when like minded people deliberate…they push each other to extreme points of views….The argument pool in a group of liberals will be only liberal. Likewise with conservatives, the other way…. Most of us on most issues do not have a ton of information…we might be steered away from moderation…. Political correctness is a good example of ideological amplification.

Denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

The trouble with radicals is that they read only radical literature, and the trouble with conservatives is that they don't read anything.

Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.

The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.

If you only talk to people who agree with you, it’s easy to believe that you’re in the majority.

Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.

Sadly, in the highest levels of economic thought in government, questions are not tolerated. It is as if we're dealing with the binary thinking of a fundamentalist religion.

My understanding of religion and science is that they're both arrogant schools of thought, and whether they acknowledge it or not they continually broadcast the idea that they have the world figured out. And what they don't know, they have a theory for which is probably correct. It feels like that shrinks the world, rather than expands it.