Thomas Merton Quotes

Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink, making it difficult to express nuance.

The difference between being out of step with a dictator and being out of step with the democratic majority is practically negligible. The important thing is to be in step.

They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them.

Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?

Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

I've always been suspicious of collective truths.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.

When a man can take a poll and tell what everybody is thinking, that means nobody is really thinking anymore.

Status quo just means that everyone's doing it. It doesn't mean that this was divinely ordained, and of course this is the right decision.

Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.

There are many people for whom 'thinking' necessarily means identifying with existing trends.

It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.

But we were made to believe and not allowed to think. We were told to obey, rather than to experiment and investigate.

The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.

Hackberry Holland's greatest fear was his fellow man's propensity to act collectively, in militaristic lockstep, under the banner of God and country. Mobs did not rush across town to do good deeds, and in Hackberry's view, there was no more odious taint on any social or political endeavor than universal approval.

Practically the whole human race is hypnotized because it thinks what somebody else told it to think.

Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

It is foolish for people to think they can align themselves and be safe in a police state.