Public Opinion — Chapter I The World out side and The Pictures in our Heads

1. 1. In 1914, islanders in the ocean lived as friends for six weeks, unaware that their home nations were at war, because the mail steamer came only once every sixty days.
2. 2. Men respond as powerfully to fictions as to realities, often creating the very fictions to which they respond.
3. 3. The pseudo-environment is a hybrid of human nature and conditions, making it useless to pontificate about what man is from observed behavior alone.
4. 4. Representative government requires an independent expert organization to make unseen facts intelligible to decision-makers.
5. 5. Public opinions must be organized for the press, not by the press, to be sound.