Mass Ignorance Quotes

The primitive simplicity of their [the masses'] minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones.

No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has any one ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is folly. They dislike ideas, for ideas make them uncomfortable.

Instead of recognizing the State as ‘the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men,’ the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent. The mass-man, ignorant of its history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will.

Germany did not acquire its admirable educational system by popular demand … the crowd cannot guide itself, cannot help itself in its blind impotence.

The degree to which the people of America are being dumbed down on purpose every day is striking. And all for the express purpose of maintaining in power a political party [the Democrats] which seeks a permanent underclass and as many dependent people on government as possible. As many uninformed, misinformed, know-nothings as they can get.

Most people are not intellectuals — a fact that intellectuals have terrible trouble coming to terms with.

Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

He who hangs on the errors of the ignorant multitude, must not be counted among great men.

What is true, just, and beautiful is not determined by popular vote. The masses everywhere are ignorant, short-sighted, motivated by envy, and easy to fool. Democratic politicians must appeal to these masses in order to be elected. Whoever is the best demagogue will win. Almost by necessity, then, democracy will lead to the perversion of truth, justice and beauty.

Every time I go past a cinema and see a queue out the door, I think, look at those fools, every penny they spend is turned into profits that are used to pass laws imprisoning their own children. Can't they see?

No wonder politicians love government schools. Where do you think the dumb masses come from that can be so easily led and manipulated?

If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass.

With attention deficit democracy, I am trying to wake up people to how the combination of mass ignorance, fear mongering by the government, and lying politicians is putting our entire system of government to a death spiral.

When I left NSA, it was with an understanding that you can never underestimate the power of large numbers of stupid people.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

There's the 5% of the people that are wise and righteous and I'd definitely be amongst them, building, communicating, and continuing to try and figure out how we can awaken the 85%. The 85% are walking around [like] cattle, not realizing the things we do, the violence we do; you see people falling victim to all sorts of unnecessary things because they just don't know the way and nobody is showing them the way.

To pine for the days before public education became a practical reality is to pine for an America held back by mass ignorance and mass illiteracy.

The masses are still ungrateful or ignorant. They prefer murder, poisonings, and crimes generally to a literature possessed of style and feeling.

Democracies in history always suffered from the necessity of uniting with much of the best in human nature a mass of ignorance and brutality lying at the bottom of all societies.

The people is a beast of muddy brain that knows not its own strength.

It is because the public are a mass inert, obtuse, and passive that they need to be shaken up from time to time so that we can tell from their bear-like grunts where they are and also where they stand. They are pretty harmless, in spite of their numbers, because they are fighting against intelligence.

The people cannot be all, and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.

Most people are too silly to be truly interested in any thing. They herd together like cattle, and do not know what is good for them.

The picture you exhibit and the accounts that are published, exhibit a melancholy verification of what our transatlantic foes have predicted; and of another thing, which is perhaps still more to be regretted, and is yet more unaccountable--that mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government. I am mortified beyond expression. I am lost in amazement, when I behold what intrigue, the interested view of desperate characters, ignorance and jealousy of the minor part of our fellow citizens, are capable of effecting; for it is hardly to be supposed that the great body of the people can be so short-sighted.