Echo Chamber Quotes

“A lot of lip service gets paid to being honest, but no one really wants to hear it unless what's being said is the party line.”
― Colin Quinn

“Let us, thusly, embrace the assumption that to each advocate of a respective paradigm within his respective bubble, the phenomenological gaps between himself and those in neighboring bubbles are insurmountable. The resident of a given bubble has become so inured to the echoes of his own ‘truth’ as to abandon all terms of commonality with the ‘truths’ of others outside his bubble. The internal terms, concepts, definitions and assumptions underlying each paradigm are different and incommensurate with those of their external counterparts. And so, to debate them would be tantamount to speaking through one another without much mutual understanding. In their communities, they speak different words, abide by different sets of logic, axioms and propositions from those of other communities; they, thusly, do not understand the terminology upholding other paradigms beside their own, and many attempts at translation have become lost in circular discourse for there exists no equivalency of terms. Thus, any gaps between bubbles of paradigm are beyond traversal; all arguments between them remain perplexing and irreconcilable. There, then, evolves, among them, a strong tendency to seek out information that only serves to confirm their own biases, and, in the process, to otherize any alien paradigms as hotbeds of disinformation.”
― Ashim Shanker

“Most of my opinions are not as informed and well rounded as I would like. I have to be humble enough to accept that I don’t know enough. If my goal is to understand something true, then being challenged is a good thing. We need to be challenged occasionally and to get out of the echo chamber that is your own philosophical group or your own confirmation biased mind. The alternative is to only be able to hear one narrative and for those who oppose that narrative to be silenced, or to have uncivil debate by two polar opposite opinions. Truth is usually found to be hidden in a field of nuance and, as Albert Maysles said, “Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.”
― Eric Overby, Legacy

“The first thing people usually do when they decide to reduce the outrage in their lives is stop talking about politics altogether - or at least stop arguing with people who disagree with them. This is exactly the wrong response. We are supposed to argue about politics; we're just supposed to figure out how to do it without shouting at the top of our lungs and calling each other stupid or evil.

Democracy calls us to have uncomfortable conversations. It asks us to listen to each other even when we would rather be listening to ourselves - or to people enough like us that we might as well be listening to ourselves. It is easier and more comfortable for us to live in perpetual high dudgeon inside our echo chambers than it is to have a meaningful conversation with people who disagree with us. The entire outrage industry has been designed to keep us in our bubbles, never challenged by disagreement and never required to think that we might be wrong.”
― Michael Austin, We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America's Civic Tradition

“To one degree or another, generally, people feel comfortable within their own echo chambers. Surrounding themselves with many others who share the same religion, eat the same food, share the same spirituality, etc. The problem with that, is, you never become who you were meant to be, you never come face to face with yourself and with your angels and your demons, you never become MORE. Because you're just echoing back into yourself what's already a part of you.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Fanaticism can often be a normalized phenomenon, and the unwritten recipe suggests that it starts and ends with absolute certainty. If you are always certain about everything, you might just live in an echo chamber, or there might be a lack of ideological diversity among your sources and friends. Only, there is no size limit to this echo chamber as long as there is consensus: and the bigger the chamber the more solidified the fanaticism, and the more solidified the fanaticism the more the outlier will be seen the liar and the fanatic.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Civic flattery - or a political culture that allows people to appear to engage in civic discourse without ever having their opinions, or even their claims of fact, seriously challenged - is ultimately more damaging to democracy than civic enmity. When we incorporate civic flattery into our personal relationships, we get shallow, insincere friendships. When we use it as the basis for political alliances, we get echo chambers. And when a skilled political manipulator flatters a large portion of the population in an attempt to acquire and consolidate power, we get perhaps the most dangerous test that a democratic society can ever face: the emergence of a demagogue.”
― Michael Austin, We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America's Civic Tradition

“I wonder, sometimes, if the Continentals were like shoals of fish, & the slightest flick of one fish caused dozens of others to follow suit, until the entire shimmering cloud had changed course.

And were the Divinities the sum of this cloud? An embodiment, perhaps, of a national subconscious? Or were they empowered by the thoughts & praises of millions of people, yet also yoked to every one of those thoughts – giant, terrible puppets forced to dance by the strings of millions of puppeteers.

This knowledge, I think, is incredibly dangerous. The Continentals derive so much pride & so much power from having Divine approval … but were they merely hearing the echoes of their own voices, magnified through strange caverns & tunnels? When they spoke to the Divinities, were they speaking to giant reflections of themselves?”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“All history is fictionalised narration of an opinion and good authors keep coming up with new opinions on existing narrations. Those who have locked themselves in ideological echo chambers and thrown away the key consider any difference of opinion as an unwelcome perturbation on their sea of conforming tranquility.”
― R. N. Prasher

“Speculation, movements having abandoned rational thought, echo chambers, projection, hypocrisy by little to no self-awareness, bewildering minds brainwashed and manipulative hearts manipulated - one is sure to find these à la people cock-sure in their biased and fanatical, immovable despising of persons. We would all do well to humbly re-think from time to time: 'Whom do I really hate? For what purpose?”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Every stance unchallenged is positioned to boast on some victorious moral high ground.”
― Criss Jami

“When [Donald Trump] watches Fox [News], he thinks he's looking out the window at what America looks like, and he's really just looking in the mirror. It has become this self-actualization of propaganda, where the people who are hearing it and saying it have all become one.”
― Dan Pfeiffer

“Theoreticians attempting to dissect human history by force fitting contrived definitions about “modernism” and “post-modernism” are toiling in vain, effectively emptying buckets into the river rapids of flowing time.”
― A.E. Samaan