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.
The surest mark of true conversion is humility.
I'm not me but living matter fermenting and forming its own shapes in the fruitfulness of every day.
Well now everything dies baby that's a fact_x000D_ But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.
Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
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