Popular Misconceptions Quotes

Any stupid remark, quoted often enough, becomes gospel.

The conventional wisdom is often wrong.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

Even when the facts are available, most people seem to prefer the legend, and refuse to believe the truth when it in any way dislodges the myth.

The more you look at 'common knowledge', the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge. No real knowledge is common.

There are plenty of people who believe that Elvis is alive, or that aliens occasionally land here to do highly personal things to people, or that the whole idea of evolution is a conspiracy of godless scientists. Almost all of these people can vote and some of them have got guns.

It is perilous to ignore idiotic ideas if those idiotic ideas are broadly and fervently believed.

The master of superstition, is the people; and in all superstition, wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.

I do look for openings where I can overturn popular misconceptions, but unlike Christopher Hitchens, I am neither a contrarian nor a lone heretic. I like to have a significant number of academics watching my back.