About this quote

Mass behavior often defies basic logic, leaving us to wonder if collective madness is actually real. When everyone around you accepts a bizarre or destructive norm, your own common sense starts to feel like a defect. We desperately want to believe that large groups of people make rational choices. History shows that panic and propaganda easily override human intelligence on a massive scale. Look closely at the next crowd you find yourself in and ask if they are actually thinking for themselves.

When to use it

• Watching your entire family get swept up in a bizarre online conspiracy theory during Sunday dinner. You look around the table and wonder how everyone suddenly lost their grip on reality.
• Sitting in a corporate town hall where the executives are cheering for a disastrous strategy that everyone knows will fail. You whisper this to a trusted coworker to check if you are the crazy one.
• Standing by while all your friends ruin their savings on a highly suspicious, hyped-up cryptocurrency. You try to warn them, but the collective greed has made them completely deaf to reason.
• Watching your entire college dorm buy into a dangerous, extreme lifestyle trend just because a popular influencer suggested it. You decide to stay behind and eat a normal meal alone.