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Hannah Arendt (from “Eichmann in Jerusalem”):

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more

Only silence enables us to say something unheard of. The compulsion of communication, by contrast, leads to the reproduction of the same, to conformism:

So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop

Byung-Chal Han • Vita Contemplativa

Philosopher George Santayana on why we follow the crowd:

“A man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body.

He may like to go alone for a walk,

but he hates to stand alone in his opinions.”

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

Harper Lee • To Kill a Mockingbird

The scary thing about Asch’s conformity experiments is that you can get many people to say black is white, if you put them in a room full of other people saying the same thing. The hopeful thing about Asch’s conformity experiments is that a single dissenter tremendously drove down the rate of conformity, even if the dissenter was only giving a

Eliezer Yudkowsky • Rationality

Human beings are reduced to data sets that can be controlled and exploited.

Byung-Chul Han • The Crisis of Narration

Novelty emerges from an individual mind, when it is judged by a committee, orthodoxy will usually prevail.

Hand Eysenck • Genius: The Natural History of Creativity (Problems in the Behavioural Sciences, Series Number 12)

"A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute," Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority in Terminiello v. Chicago . "It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often... See more

'The Constitution is not a suicide pact'

A single joyless person is enough to create constant discouragement and cloudy skies for a whole household. and it is a miracle if there is not one person like that. Happiness is not nearly so contagious a disease.

— Friedrich Nietzsche