Everett Dean Martin Quotes

It is children and savages and the illiterate who have the most implicit faith. It is said that unbelief is sin. This is not so; it is nobler to doubt than to believe, for to doubt is often to take sides with fact against oneself. Nietzsche said that this is characteristic of "higher men."

The crowd is a social phenomenon only in the sense that it affects a number of persons at the same time.

Standardization develops a kind of mass mind, which in mature years renders men very susceptible to crowd appeal.

Its aim is to “put something over” on people, with or without their knowledge or consent… neither truth nor the basic values of civilization get a fair hearing.

Psychology is an attempt to gain a scientific understanding of human nature. We are all deeply interested in knowing human nature. When we are not talking about ourselves we are usually talking about our neighbors.

There is a quality of the educated mind which may best be described as a kind of sincerity, and conversely the outstanding trait of ignorance is that of clever insincerity.

The skepticism which has value is that which leads one on to further study and investigation. And it is characterized by intellectual modesty.

The so-called natural sentiments of the average man are mostly the inherited prejudices of the once suppressed classes. The emphasis upon natural goodness is, psychologically speaking, unwillingness to submit such prejudices to wholesome self-criticism. Hence the democratic government tends to support each crowd in its delusion of infallibility. The crowd rationalizes its will to rule in terms of narrow and parochial ideas of righteousness and seeks to force conformity to such ideas upon all. The imagined vindication of the common man's notions of goodness is regarded as the ultimate triumph of righteousness. Hence democracy has always manifested a certain crusading spirit, and the democratic Utopia is envisaged as a sort of Roman peace with "righteousness" established by force rather than assent.

Education has to do with insight, with valuing, with understanding, with the development of the power of discrimination, the ability to make choice amongst the possibilities of experience and to think and act in ways that distinguish men from animals and higher men from lower.

Governments and churches and ruling classes and commercial groups have always sought to get their hands on the institutions for the education of youth and utilize them for their own interests.

The reader will, I think, soon discover that I have tried to affirm the processes of his mental development and ripening of personality---something quite independent both of the self-idolatries of the mass and of those primitive emotional fixations and stereotypes whose antiquated symbolisms linger on under the terminology of religion. If there is anything affirmative in the assertion of the meaning of spiritual maturity in the modern world, then I may hope that the effort of this book will be regarded as constructive.

One of the serious results of propaganda is that it has caused the public to think that education and propaganda are the same thing, and thus to make an ignorant multitude believe it is being educated when it is only being manipulated. Education aims at independence of judgement. Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd.

When we think we are most free our opinions and our behavior are being skillfully manipulated by persons operating behind the scenes.

Another method of escaping moral responsibility is to run with the crowd. The crowd never considers consequences; it is bent upon vindicating its principles at any cost. It is anonymous; in it the individual may not be held to account.

The evil effect of these attempts to manipulate the multitude by pampering its weaknesses---in return for material and other advantages to persons and for ends not disclosed—is clearly seen in various aspects of our common life. In politics such effect have long been deplorable.