Marshall McLuhan Quotes

When everyone thinks alike, no one is thinking clearly.

Where all think alike, none thinks very much.

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

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.

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.

While people are quick to praise the wisdom of the crowd, being an old-school journalist, I look at the wisdom of the crowd and know it can quickly turn into a mob mentality.

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.

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

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

When everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks.

When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.

The rank and file are not philosophers, they are not educated to think for themselves, but simply to accept, unquestioned, whatever comes.

Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see.

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

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

I always find myself very distrustful of intense crowd phenomena, and I think those are things that we should always try to question, especially critically.

I've always been suspicious of collective truths.

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Foolish people follow the system, get caught up in media news, what the government wants you to believe and all the higher powers want you to believe, and go down the same path as all the sheep in the cattle market.

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

It is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority.

The enemy of individuality is groupthink.

We do our worst when we're surrounded by a lot of people who agree with us.