At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
Interpretation
Public opinion is often not based on facts, but rather on false beliefs and biases.
Gore Vidal's quote highlights the complex and often disorderly nature of public opinion, suggesting that it is shaped less by truth and more by a confusing mix of superstitions, incorrect information, and deep-seated prejudices. This serves as a caution not to rely solely on popular consensus, as it can be misleading and not representative of reality.
In practice
During a debate about social media's impact on society, one could use this quote to emphasize the misleading nature of online narratives.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.
You exist in time, but you belong to eternity- You are a penetration of eternity into the world of time-You are deathless, living in a body of death- Your consciousness knows no death, no birth- It is only your body that is born and dies-But you are not aware of your consciousness-You are not conscious of your consciousness-And that is the whole art of meditation;Becoming conscious of consciousness itself.
To have lost is less disturbing than to wonder if we may possibly have won; and Eustacia could now, like other people at such a stage, take a standing-point outside herself, observe herself as a disinterested spectator, and think what a sport for Heaven this woman Eustacia was.
Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine ACTIONS than in the non-performance of base ones.
Do not act following customary beliefs.
But the big feature of human-level intelligence is not what it does when it is works but what it does when it's stuck.
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