Walter Lippman Public Opinion

The mass of absolutely illiterate, of
feeble-minded, grossly neurotic, undernourished and frustrated
individuals, is very considerable, much more considerable there is
reason to think than we generally suppose. Thus a wide popular appeal
is circulated among persons who are mentally children or barbarians,
people whose lives are a morass of entanglements, people whose
vitality is exhausted, shut-in people, and people whose experience has
comprehended no factor in the problem under discussion. The stream of
public opinion is stopped by them in little eddies of misunderstanding,
where it is discolored with prejudice and far fetched analogy.