GKC Catholics v Madison Avenue

“In any case, my own experience of the modern world tells me that Catholics are much more and not less individualistic than other men in their general opinions… Catholics know the two or three transcendental truths on which they do agree; and take rather a pleasure in disagreeing on everything else… It is no longer a question of liberty from kings and captains and inquisitors. It is a question of liberty from catchwords and headlines and hypnotic repetitions and all the plutocratic platitudes imposed on us by advertisement and journalism… These modern people mean by mental activity simply an express train going faster and faster along the same rails to the same station; or having more and more railway carriages hooked on to it to be taken to the same place… Thousands who have never learned to think at all are urged to think whatever may take their fancy about Jesus Christ. But they are, in fact, forbidden to think in any way but one about Abraham Lincoln. That is why it is worth remarking that it is a Catholic who has thought for himself.”

-G.K. Chesterton (of course)