Groupthink Quotes

“For it is dangerous to attach one's self to the crowd in front, and so long as each one of us is more willing to trust another than to judge for himself, we never show any judgement in the matter of living, but always a blind trust, and a mistake that has been passed on from hand to hand finally involves us and works our destruction. It is the example of other people that is our undoing; let us merely separate ourselves from the crowd, and we shall be made whole. But as it is, the populace,, defending its own iniquity, pits itself against reason. And so we see the same thing happening that happens at the elections, where, when the fickle breeze of popular favour has shifted, the very same persons who chose the praetors wonder that those praetors were chosen.”
― Seneca

“But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice”
― Ayn Rand, Anthem

“Alice is fictional. This isn't.”
― Jess C. Scott, Zombie Mania: A Zombie Apocalypse Parody

“Do not take roads traveled by the public.”
― Pythagoras

“All representatives of the ideology of power, which is based on a false conception of the self, fear people who are inner-directed and have contempt for them because it is a fear that cannot be acknowledged. It makes no difference if one is on the right or left politically. What we are faced with on all sides is an obsession with power, rather than an openness to reality with all its rich and vital possibilities.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Conformist thinking is self-defeating because it knows only the categories of punishment and submission, but not the potential that lies in understanding. The image of the enemy must be maintained at all costs; for this reason, the "enemy" must never be humanized. Both the revolutionary and the conformist depend on the image of the enemy; they need it in order to rationalize their violence to maintain their positions.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“We couldn’t survive as a people if we were always confined to one ship or one world.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Dawn

“Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.”
― - Albert Einstein

“Although it is arguable that the major world religions began as cults, most have become so institutionalized that they have lost many of their cultic features.”
― Kathleen Taylor, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control

“There are some phenomena commonly found in both cults and religions (at least in their early days). These include a strict differentiation of leader and followers; rebellion against established authority; paranoia as the new movement seeks to establish itself; simplistic, dualistic thinking [...] (good/evil, believer/heretic, saved/damned); and a tendency towards utopian thinking.”
― Kathleen Taylor, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control

“Cult followers typically consider their leaders divine or, at least, mandated by some supreme authority (God, fate, the forces of history, or whatever ethereal idea fits their particular world view) to change the universe.”
― Kathleen Taylor, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control

“Many followers tend to join in their teens or early twenties, when they are still unformed adults—individuals not yet fully at ease in their own skins, seeking a sense of identity and security which the cult is able to provide.”
― Kathleen Taylor, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control

“Cicero believed “luck” determined the success of gambling with essentially random devices. He also apparently understood that there was a relationship between the luck (odds) on a particular throw or set of throws and long-term frequencies. But Cicero was later executed, illustrating that rationality does not guarantee success; it only increases its likelihood. In fact, as pointed out earlier, opting for rationality when others do not can lead to social ostracism.”
― Reid Hastie, Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making

“But we must realize that even this tendency to restrict the exploitation of class privileges is a fairly common ingredient of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is not simply amoral. It is the morality of the closed society—of the group, or of the tribe; it is not individual selfishness, but it is collective selfishness.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“There's nothing wrong with being part of a group. Humans are social, so it's no surprise that people band together. In fact, many important human achievements, like the civil rights movement, are inspired by groups. But group behavior can also create a sense of division.”
― Jessica Speer, Middle School - Safety Goggles Advised: Exploring the WEIRD Stuff from Gossip to Grades, Cliques to Crushes and Popularity to Peer Pressure

“Our civilization with its demand for obedience is at the root of self-hatred; here lies the source of our malaise and unhappiness. Whenever we avoid facing truth for the sake of those ideologies that sustain our power-based culture, unhappiness will be a constant feature in our lives, no matter what the economic or political character of a given society may be.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“The clearest sign of this is the revengeful and reproachful manner in which many people behave, regardless of whether they live in a capitalist or communist country. For revenge and reproach – not freedom Ash have become their goals in life; consequently, the increasingly intensify there dependency and fall prey to the illusion the power is the panacea for all problems.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“The insanity masking itself as normality is fundamentally different from what is usually meant by that word; therefore, we need to reformulate the concept of insanity. Schizophrenia--the "recognizable" form of insanity-needs to be seen from a completely different perspective: namely, as the struggle against a much more portentous kind of insanity, one that has the semblance of normality. Here, again, we get a sense of the difficulty of my approach: we are all taken in by the outer appearance of normality, since, under the pressures of our upbringing, we have lost contact with what lies behind this facade.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“It is primarily the inability to tolerate feelings that brings about disassociation between thought and feeling. Although this is considered a characteristic of schizophrenic behavior, it is true of us “normal“ people and not of schizophrenics. In the latters’ case, disassociation is an expression of the refusal to produce imposed in the hypocritical feelings. For it is not that schizophrenics are incapable of tolerating real feelings of pain, sorrow, despair, or joy; they simply reject living with the distortions of these feelings. But when “normal“ men and women cannot tolerate helplessness, for instance, they need to seek relief in a “reality“ that is contemptuous of such an experience and that denies its inherent potentiality as a source of genuine strength.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Development is directed toward the inner world if children receive the kind of love that enables them to experience helplessness without feeling alone. If this is the case, helplessness will not be perceived as a total abandonment or condemnation but as a state through pain and sorrow to new strength rather than to destruction sort of experience will produce a self that does not perceive helplessness as a deadly threat but as a possibility for new integration and new beginnings.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Development is directed toward the inner world if children receive the kind of love that enables them to experience helplessness without feeling alone. If this is the case, helplessness will not be perceived as a total abandonment or condemnation but as a state through pain and sorrow to new strength rather than to destruction. This sort of experience will produce a self that does not perceive helplessness as a deadly threat but as a possibility for new integration and new beginnings.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Solidarity is great for a group that needs to work in unison or march into battle. Solidarity engenders trust, teamwork, and mutual aid. But it can also foster groupthink, orthodoxy, and a paralyzing fear of challenging the collective. Solidarity can interfere with a group's efforts to find the truth”
― Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

“I see traces of the Children of God, with all its inherent cult-think and harmful behavior, in almost every group, organization, or team I have ever joined or studied. And I'm always asking myself: Where does a cult end and a culture begin? What is the difference between a good organization and a bad cult? I don't think there is a difference, ultimately. Most groups are just groups. Evil cults. Great armies. Wonderful families. Amazing countries. Pile whatever modifiers on them you want. Each one has the same inherent strengths, weaknesses, and potential pitfalls.”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“How different am I, how different are you, how different is any human—all of us with instincts that tell us we are safer in our groups?”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“They, they, they. The mysterious "they" of Versailles, as though it is the palace itself that talks, as though the statues and mirrors can speak.”
― Sally Christie, The Sisters of Versailles

“Mob is not the plural of man, he said. We’re dealing with a different species, that has kaleidoscopes in the hollows of the eyes. Where projections of violence keep rotating at increasing velocity. Until the prisms shatter with their own frenzy, & the blinded creature collapses in the rubble it has created.”
― Ursule Molinaro, The Autobiography of Cassandra, Princess & Prophetess of Troy

“Everybody goes where everybody goes.”
― Thomas Vato

“Sometimes there must be someone who says something nobody else does on something the majority agrees but stays silent not to put a target on their backs.”
― Thomas Vato

“Those who speak of their anger, their mistrust, or their dislike of certain groups tend not to see any contradiction in this behaviour and their claims to be moral, professional, or effective psychologists.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice

“Telling people that they are racist—on the basis of immutable characteristics, using incomprehensible definitions that they may not know or understand—then claiming they are “fragile” and in denial when they try to defend themselves, or accusing them of “gaslighting” when they don’t agree with you, is a punitive way of treating people, whatever their colour.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice