Marshall McLuhan Quotes

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.

The world chooses to think what the world thinks.

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 don't like it when people spout about the popular opinion just to make it louder.

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.

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

I also think that there's a little peer pressure. They probably think that a majority of people their age think the same things and they want to be considered - I don't know what the word is - in, hip, whatever, with that bunch. I think time will take care of some of this as it is revealed that [Donald] Trump is not what they think.

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 majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

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

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

We all get swept up in the hype machine. Nobody is immune to that.

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.

Men are sheep. Where one goes, the rest will soon follow. -Lady Whistledown

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.

Too bad your inner sheep never forgets to follow.

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

Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.

But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.

Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?

If the majority of people were right, we'd be living in paradise. But we are not living in paradise, we are living in hell. What does it mean? That means the majority of people are wrong. So I never believed what people told me.