Mike

“So where power is in the hands of a savage and uneducated tyrant, anyone who is greatly his superior will doubtless be an object of fear to the ruler, and never able to be on terms of genuine friendship with him.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“In her book, The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby mercilessly lampoons the very American notion that, because there are two sides to every question, both deserve respect and both must, in some way, be true. The Gut tells us that this is only fair, and we are a fair people, after all. All one has to do is muster an argument with enough vigor, package it well, and get enough people to buy both the idea and the product through which it is expressed. The more people buy, the more correct you are. The barriers that once forced American cranks to adapt or withdraw- or even merely to defend- their ideas all have fallen. It is considered impolite to raise them again, almost un-American, since we are all entitled to our opinion.”
― Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

“When you're an activist, you have to think about the people you're trying to protect, not just make yourself feel good. That's elementary. Not every action that makes you feel good is going to be helpful to the victims. Some might even be harmful.”
― Noam Chomsky, Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy

“So when the orator is more convincing than the doctor, what happens is that an ignorant person is more convincing than the expert before an equally ignorant audience.”
― Plato, Gorgias