51 quotes
Education aims at independence of judgment. Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd.
Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929)
The attitude of authority discourages the spirit of search and criticism. Popular prejudice is entrenched. Non-essentials are over-emphasized. Crowd-mindedness, rather than independence of judgment, prevails.
The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)
I have characterized education as a victory won over one's wish-fancies and childish egoism, as the lifting of the problems of life to higher and more significant dilemmas, as the attainment of mastery. A humanistic liberalism seeks freedom as broad-mindedness; it strives for a highly civilized, urbane and sophisticated state of mind in which insight is deepened and interest is widened.
The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)
It will hardly be denied that a revolution, whatever else it may be, is a phenomenon of the crowd. I have endeavored to approach the historical survey of revolutionary movements from the standpoint of social psychology.
Farewell to Revolution (1935)
…so long as the public may be manipulated by misrepresentation and by appeal to ignorance and prejudice, it is the public’s own fault if the “knowing ones” make use of questionable methods.
Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929)
I use the term "liberal" not in the political sense, as if it meant half measures, but in its original sense meaning by a liberal education the kind of education which sets the mind free from the servitude of the crowd and from vulgar self-interests.
The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)
The phenomena which we call the crowd-mind, instead of being the outgrowth of the directly social, are social only in the sense that all mental life has a social significance; they are rather the result of forces hidden in the personal and unconscious psyche of the members of the crowd, forces which are merely released by social gatherings of a certain sort.
The Behavior of Crowds (1920)
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 Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)
The student of social psychology ... is concerned not so much with the panaceas that may be proposed for the solution of the economic problems, but is interested rather in the possibility that under any economic system a maximum number of people should be able to grow from infantile tribal ways to self-directing maturity.
The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932)
Moral education is not mere drill in the ways of the herd. The good man's first duty, as Professor Erskine says, is to be intelligent. Good intentions alone do not enable man to judge wisely or behave well. The prevailing idea that one can be at the same time good and stupid has strongly influenced our education.
The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)
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.
Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929)