Our Own Worst Enemy Quotes

“Instead, the threat to democracy now in America and elsewhere comes from the working and middle classes—the people among whom I was born and raised—whose rage comes overwhelmingly from cultural insecurity, inflated expectations, tribal partisan alliances, obsessions about ethnicity and identity, blunted ambition, and a childlike understanding of the limits of government.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Not only do they seek out the streams of disinformation that make them dumber by the minute, but they also then levy demands on government that are contradictory beyond any possible resolution.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“The constant ability to see into the lives of our neighbors, to compare ourselves to strangers, to be in constant contact with the entire planet day and night, is unnatural and pushes the human mind far beyond its capacity for reason and reflection.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“As the political scientist Ian Bremmer wrote in the run-up to the U.S. elections of 2020, victims seek saviors, and there is never a shortage of volunteers.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“The voters lack the information—or the interest—to develop a coherent view of politics beyond a general party identification, and this reality plays itself out regularly in U.S. elections.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“When the citizens of a dominant culture come to believe that the end is near for their way of life, they search for scapegoats—especially if they suspect that they themselves have been the agents of their own cultural decline. Unwilling to look in a mirror, unable to confront their own habits and tastes, these citizens choose to believe that the world they knew has been ripped away from them by stealth and subterfuge. The most insecure and frightened among them will also reach what they think is an obvious conclusion: that democracy, and especially liberal democracy, was the instrument of their culture’s destruction, and so to find salvation and assure their own survival, they must therefore reject democracy.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“How people respond to change is always a matter of resilience, but in a democracy it is also a process of compromise and negotiation. And here, the technology of connection is doing its worst work by destroying us as people. It is depriving ordinary citizens of a basic ability to pause, to deliberate, and to reason.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Liberalism thrives in the center, between the extremes, where negotiation and compromise and trust must rule the day in order to produce consensus and solutions. But the center—a place that discourages performative anger and drama, and instead is filled with the boring necessity of deliberation and trust—is difficult ground to defend when the pain of other human beings is mobilized in the battle for power. The Unlucky Horseshoe One of the most striking features of the rise of illiberalism in modern democracies is the “horseshoe” effect, in which the complaints of the right and left become more alike as they become more extreme, the way the two ends of a horseshoe meet in a near-circle.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“change should mean more participation—but by informed voters through institutions that are not constantly and immediately at the mercy of a majority.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Citizens of the democracies are the authors of their own destinies, and what they have made they can also change and improve.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Alone in a world full of bewildering options, human beings will prefer the reassurance of the pack and the safety of the herd rather than choose to grapple with the ambiguities and consequences of freedom.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Liberal democracy depends on knowledge and virtue, and both of these are now in short supply among the citizens of the developed world.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Sources and apps that goad us into emphasizing our aggression, encourage us to aggrandize ourselves at the expense of others, and reward us for displaying our most negative thoughts are destroying our ability to function as citizens, even without the slew of emotional problems created when our minds are spinning in a tornado of random sensory input all day.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Liberal democracy relies on resilient, civic-minded citizens who think themselves to be members of a tolerant and safe community.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Political identities that were once constructed from life among those we know in places we live are now formed over huge distances among strangers whose bonds are formed mostly over things they loathe in common.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“people who shut off Facebook, even for a month, reported a general improvement in their mood and happiness.32”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“As one study found, frequent Facebook users—especially those who use the site to check in on the relative status or happiness of others—end up plagued by feelings of envy and are more prone to depression.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Overwhelming and astounding inequality, especially when it has an element of the unattainable, arouses far less envy than minimal inequality, which inevitably causes the envious to think: ‘I might have been in his place.’ ”30”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“All modern social, political, and sociological ills can be traced to social media.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“The sheer size of our interaction with the virtual world, and the speed with which that world has enveloped all of us, has created a vast and yet lonely space, where we are both too connected and too isolated at the same time.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“Once again, as humanity has managed to do with everything from fire to nuclear energy, we have found a great tool that can advance human civilization. And once again, we are at risk of using it to destroy ourselves. Connectedness, only so recently a marvel and a blessing, is now a curse.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“No society could survive—and surely no society could be decent—if everybody in it were able to communicate everything. —Daniel J. Boorstin”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“of expectation, that the ordinary pressures, worries, and temptations of life in an open society are serial catastrophes for which the only remedy is the abandonment of their own freedoms.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“A society that is post-factual is pre-fascist.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy

“We are wired, as human beings, to react to stories of danger and to seek protection. We click on the story, which in turn sends a signal to the content provider that they have captured our eyeballs, and so they send us more of whatever we just clicked on. We click on those, too, and the provider sends us more. Soon, we are in an anxiety spiral of reading, clicking, finding more horror, clicking, reading again, and on and on, never realizing that the terrifying world we have entered is a chamber of horrors we built for ourselves, to our own precise specifications. And then, exhausted, we sit back and think: Our form of government cannot keep us safe. Democracy has failed us. We need something stronger.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“this was a bored “lumpen-bourgeoisie,” a narcissistic and mostly affluent middle class of deep pockets and shallow minds who paid lip service to democracy but had no interest in it if the results of democratic elections offended them.6”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“When citizens are always performing for each other, they expect accolades and instant psychic rewards, even if they have not earned them, and they become angry and resentful if they do not get them.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“The American Dream cannot produce “rags to riches,” but it has, as Strain puts it, delivered reliably on the promise of “rags to comfort.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“the threat to democracy now in America and elsewhere comes from the working and middle classes—the people among whom I was born and raised—whose rage comes overwhelmingly from cultural insecurity, inflated expectations, tribal partisan alliances, obsessions about ethnicity and identity, blunted ambition, and a childlike understanding of the limits of government.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

“This is the twenty-first century. We were supposed to be choking on overpopulation, eating Soylent Green, and joining gangs in the wasteland to protect our supplies of water and gasoline. Instead, we’re put out when the Wi-Fi goes down on our flight to Orlando.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy