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"The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else."
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"The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity."
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Personal Development
"Group conformity scares the pants off me because it's so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn't want to - or can't - join the Big Parade."
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Personal Development
"It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher."
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Personal Development
"When things don't change, their sameness becomes an accretion. That is why all society puts on flesh. Succumbs to the cubicles and begins to fill them."
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Personal Development
"Whatever you may be sure of be sure of this - that you are dreadfully like other people."
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Personal Development
"Put too many one-size-fits-all jackets on Americans and the place explodes."
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Personal Development
"Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth."
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Personal Development
"Most people are as happy as other people decide they should be."
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Personal Development
"Conformity is often more dangerous than war. War destroys the body but confomity destoys the imaginative mind."
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Personal Development
"The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.'"
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Personal Development
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"It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man."
Evolution
"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."
Democracy
"War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands."
Conflict
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
Politics
"Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man."
Reflection
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Politics
"Life is a dead-end street."
Life
"I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing."
Democracy
"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."
Democracy
"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods."
Religion
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