Nothing is more important than this: we must not be like sheep following the flock ahead of us. We shouldn't go where we ought to go, but where everyone else is going. Nothing causes us more trouble than listening to popular opinion. We think the best things are whatever most people accept as best. We mistake fake goods for real ones. We live by copying others instead of using our own reason. This is why people pile up in great heaps, rushing and crushing each other.
Nothing, therefore, is more important than that we should not, like sheep, follow the flock that has gone before us, and thus proceed not whither we ought, but whither the rest are going. Now nothing gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common rumour, and our habit of thinking that those things are best which are most generally received as such, of taking many counterfeits for truly good things, and of living not by reason but by imitation of others. This is the cause of those great heaps into which men rush till they are piled one upon another.