Spiritual Quote of the Day (Thomas Merton, on the Christian Subject to Misinformation and Demagoguery)

“The Christian who is misinformed; who is subject to the demagoguery of extremists in the press, on the radio or on TV, and who is perhaps to some extent temperamentally inclined to associate himself with fanatical groups in politics, can do an enormous amount of harm to society, to the Church and to himself. With sincere intentions of serving the cause of Christ he may cooperate in follies and injustices of disastrous magnitude.” — American Trappist monk, theologian, memoirist and poet Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Life and Holiness (1963)

Quote of the Day (Ann Radcliffe, on ‘The Best Security Against the Contagion of Folly’)

“A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness.” — English Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

What stuck out for me in this quote was the word “contagion.” It may have been a metaphor when it was written. 

But these days—as COVID-19, aided more than a little bit by misinformation, has not only stubbornly hung on but even formed variants—the term is literal as well as symbolic.

Quote of the Day (Mark Twain, on Invented Quotations)

"It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive."— American novelist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910), Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (1897)

Quote of the Day (Daniel Levitin, on the Proliferation of Misinformation)

“Misinformation has been a fixture of human life for thousands of years, and was documented in biblical times and classical Greece. The unique problem we face today is that misinformation has proliferated; it is devilishly entwined on the Internet with real information, making the two difficult to separate. And misinformation is promiscuous — it consorts with people of all social and educational classes and turns up in places you don’t expect it to. Misinformation can take hold and become well known, and suddenly a whole lot of people are believing things that aren't so. “—Daniel J. Levitin, A Field Guide To Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (2016)