“Gullible citizens are a demagogue’s dream.”
Section 4, “Science, Medicine, and the Environment” Chapter 38 “More Dismal Math Scores for U.S. Students” (p. 165)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)
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John Allen Paulos 48
American mathematician 1945Related quotes

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

"Age of Ignorance" New York Review of Books, March 20, 2012 http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/03/20/age-of-ignorance/

On belief in UFOs, in "Flying Saucers: Fact or Farce?", San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, "People" supplement, (20 October 1963); reprinted in The Maker of Dune : Insights of a Master of Science Fiction (1987), edited by Tim O'Reilly
General sources

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, “The Truth about Communism” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051180423&view=1up&seq=5 (1948), p. 15-16

1910s, The World Movement (1910)
Context: Each people can do justice to itself only if it does justice to others; but each people can do its part in the world movement for all only if it first does its duty within its own household. The good citizen must be a good citizen of his own country first before he can with advantage be a citizen of the world at large.

Statement to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, as quoted in Problems of Journalism (1966) by the American Society of Newspaper Editors
Unsourced variant : "Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens — it is an imposition on the state."
Variant: Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens.

Address to the Constituent Assembly (1947)
Context: You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England, conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.