The majority of men have no opinions, and these have to be pumped into them from outside, like lubricants into machinery. Hence it is necessary that some mind or other should hold and exercise authority, so that the people without opinions- the majority- can start having opinions. For without these, the common life of humanity would be chaos, a historic void, lacking in any organic structure. Consequently, without a spiritual power, without someone to command, and in proportion as this is lacking, chaos reigns over mankind. . Ortega Y Gasset
About This Quote

The quote above comes from the book “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville. In the book, Tocqueville explores the role of religion in society. He examines the role of religion in America, an emerging democracy, during the early 19th century. Although the United States was not yet a democracy at that time, Tocqueville sought to understand how an emerging democracy could maintain its own identity while allowing for religious diversity.

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More Quotes By Ortega Y Gasset
  1. The majority of men have no opinions, and these have to be pumped into them from outside, like lubricants into machinery. Hence it is necessary that some mind or other should hold and exercise authority, so that the people without opinions- the majority- can start...
  2. A concrete example of this mechanism is found in one of the most alarming phenomena of the last thirty years: the enormous increase in the police force of all countries. The increase of population has inevitably rendered it necessary. However accustomed we may be to...
  3. Historical knowledge is a technique of the first order to preserve and continue a civilisation already advanced. Not that it affords positive solutions to the new aspect of vital conditions- life is always different from what it was- but that it prevents us committing the...
  4. The masses are advancing, " said Hegel in apocalyptic fashion. "Without some new spiritual influence, our age, which is a revolutionary age, will produce a catastrophe, " was the pronouncement of Comte. "I see the flood-tide of nihilism rising, " shrieked Nietzsche from a crag...
  5. To spoil means to put no limit on caprice, to give one the impression that everything is permitted to him and that he has no obligations. The young child exposed to this regime has no experience of its own limits. By reason of the removal...
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