Everett Dean Martin: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Animal training may give one the means to make a living; liberal education gives living a meaning.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 44

Education , Animals , Training

“Dr. Kallen says, "Free public education and private instruction purchasable at a price are both but the community's device to meet present needs by transmitting the past unchanged. They provide a grammar of assent, not a logic of inquiry. The mental posture they habituate the youth in is not the posture of reflection. The mental posture they habituate the youth in is the posture of conformity. They require belief, not investigation. They impose reverence for the past and idealization of the present. They envision the future as a perpetuation of the past, not as a new creation of it. They are Main Street's most powerful instrument of self-reproduction without variation…. They enable government both visible and invisible to continue by consent, for they forestall and inhibit in the citizens of the land the technique of doubt and dissent which is the necessary condition of good government and the true inward-ness of that eternal vigilance so notoriously the price of liberty."”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 75

Youth , Education , Communication , Past

“Crowd men have no sense of humor. It is very difficult to educate solemn and opinionated people.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 89

Men , People , Education , Sense

“Individuality is a cultural achievement rather than a gift of nature. During the 19th century it was rather common for people to believe they were expressing their individuality by being "natural."”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), pp. 9-10

People , Nature

“Another method of escaping moral responsibility is to run with the crowd. The crowd never considers consequences; it is bent upon vindicating its principles at any cost. It is anonymous; in it the individual may not be held to account.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 195

“I have characterized education as a victory won over one's wish-fancies and childish egoism, as the lifting of the problems of life to higher and more significant dilemmas, as the attainment of mastery. A humanistic liberalism seeks freedom as broad-mindedness; it strives for a highly civilized, urbane and sophisticated state of mind in which insight is deepened and interest is widened.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 133

Life , Education , Problem , Freedom

“Most minds are loaded down with the seriousness of their convictions.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 89

“Psychology is an attempt to gain a scientific understanding of human nature. We are all deeply interested in knowing human nature. When we are not talking about ourselves we are usually talking about our neighbors.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: Psychology and Its Use (1933), p. 9

Understanding , Nature

“The attitude of authority discourages the spirit of search and criticism. Popular prejudice is entrenched. Non-essentials are over-emphasized. Crowd-mindedness, rather than independence of judgment, prevails.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 181

Search

“One reason why people cherish the delusion that they are still free long after they have lost or destroyed the liberties won by their ancestors lies in the boundless vanity of man when acting as mass. The mass in modern times believes it is sovereign. As sovereign it is free.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: Liberty (1930), p. 13

People , Time

“Is learning a venture in spiritual freedom that is humanism, or is it a routine process of animal training?”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 27

Freedom , Learning , Animals , Training

“The phenomena which we call the crowd-mind, instead of being the outgrowth of the directly social, are social only in the sense that all mental life has a social significance; they are rather the result of forces hidden in the personal and unconscious psyche of the members of the crowd, forces which are merely released by social gatherings of a certain sort.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Behavior of Crowds (1920), p. 7

Life , Sense , Personality

“The evil effect of these attempts to manipulate the multitude by pampering its weaknesses---in return for material and other advantages to persons and for ends not disclosed—is clearly seen in various aspects of our common life. In politics such effect have long been deplorable.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929), p. 144

Life , Evil , Personality

“The attainment of spirit today requires the very most uncompromisingly critical analysis and revaluation of ideals and enthusiasms, ancient and modern, of which the awakening modern mind is capable.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: Civilizing Ourselves: Intellectual Maturity in the Modern World (1932), p. xi, Foreword

“Every government, our own included, fights with propaganda as deadly as poison gas.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 45

Fight

“Propaganda is making puppets out of us. We are moved by hidden strings which the propagandist manipulates.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929), p. 142

“It is children and savages and the illiterate who have the most implicit faith. It is said that unbelief is sin. This is not so; it is nobler to doubt than to believe, for to doubt is often to take sides with fact against oneself. Nietzsche said that this is characteristic of "higher men."”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 88

Men , Children , Faith

“Psychological knowledge is now necessary for the citizen if he is to play his part wisely in public affairs. Our age is greatly interested in social and political questions. There is a widespread belief that the evils of the world may be abolished by the magic of mass action.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: Psychology and Its Use (1933), p. 23

Age , World , Question , Knowledge

“Its aim is to “put something over” on people, with or without their knowledge or consent… neither truth nor the basic values of civilization get a fair hearing.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929), p. 142

People , Truth , Knowledge

“…so long as the public may be manipulated by misrepresentation and by appeal to ignorance and prejudice, it is the public’s own fault if the “knowing ones” make use of questionable methods.”

Everett Dean Martin

Source: Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929), p. 144

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