Quotations about:
    wisdom of the masses


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I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English novelist
Mansfield Park, ch. 11 [Mary Crawford] (1814)
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Added on 10-Oct-22 | Last updated 10-Oct-22
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Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!

Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist
Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, ch. 2 (1959) [tr. Hull]
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The motto of the "relatively unconscious man" who "clings to the commonplace, the obvious, the probable, the collectively valid." Reprinted in the The Collected Works of C.G. Jung - Civilization in Transition, vol. 10, ¶ 653.

Probable source of the frequently-attributed (but unfound) "Thinking is difficult. That's why most people judge."
 
Added on 26-Apr-22 | Last updated 1-Jun-22
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The firmness with which the people have withstood the late abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them. As little is it necessary to impose on their senses, or dazzle their minds by pomp, splendor, or forms. Instead of this artificial, how much surer is that real respect, which results from the use of their reason, and the habit of bringing everything to the test of common sense.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to John Tyler (28 Jun 1804)
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Added on 16-May-11 | Last updated 14-Jul-22
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The shield against the stingings of conscience is the universal practice of our contemporaries. Again, it is very easy to be as wise and good as your companions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Uses of Great Men,” Representative Men Lecture 1, Boston (1845-12-11)
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Added on 26-Mar-09 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

E. B. White (1899-1985) American author, critic, humorist [Elwyn Brooks White]
“Notes and Comments,” New Yorker (3 Jul 1943)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 28-Sep-21
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