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Full Idea
Can anything be more foolish than to suppose that those, whom individually one despises as illiterate mechanics, are worth anything collectively?
Gist of Idea
If one despises illiterate mechanics individually, they are not worth more collectively
Source
M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], V.xxxvi.104)
Book Ref
Cicero: 'Tusculan Disputations', ed/tr. King,J.E. [Harvard Loeb 1927], p.531
A Reaction
Aristotle disagrees (Idea 2823). In 1906 a huge number of people guessed the weight of a cow at a fair, and the average was within one pound of the truth. In our world the healthy workings of the group are warped by the mass media.
Related Idea
Idea 2823 The many may add up to something good, even if they are inferior as individuals [Aristotle]
| 22575 | Ultimate democracy is tyranny [Aristotle] |
| 5895 | If one despises illiterate mechanics individually, they are not worth more collectively [Cicero] |
| 13557 | Unfortunately the majority do not tend to favour what is best [Seneca] |
| 19828 | Democracy leads to internal strife, as people struggle to maintain or change ways of ruling [Rousseau] |
| 19835 | When ministers change the state changes, because they always reverse policies [Rousseau] |
| 22394 | Democracy diminishes mankind, making them mediocre and lowering their value [Nietzsche] |
| 18331 | Democracy is organisational power in decline [Nietzsche] |
| 23166 | In democracy we are more aware of being governed than of our tiny share in government [Russell] |
| 23169 | Democratic institutions become impossible in a fanatical democracy [Russell] |
| 21527 | On every new question the majority is always wrong at first [Russell] |
| 21526 | Unfortunately ordinary voters can't detect insincerity [Russell] |
| 23842 | Party politics in a democracy can't avoid an anti-democratic party [Weil] |
| 7594 | Democrats are committed to a belief and to its opposite, if the majority prefer the latter [Scruton] |