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A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.
Daniel Kahneman
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Frequent repetition of a falsehood can lead people to believe it is true due to its familiarity.

This quote emphasizes how the human mind often conflates familiarity with truth. Daniel Kahneman highlights the psychological tendency to accept repeated statements as valid, which is a tactic utilized by both authoritarian regimes and marketers to shape beliefs and opinions, ultimately suggesting a critical awareness of the information we consume is essential.

Themes

FalsehoodRepetitionBeliefTruthPsychology

In practice

Example use cases

In a debate about misinformation, one could use this quote to highlight the dangers of repeated falsehoods.

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Quote by Daniel Kahneman | QuoteProject