The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

be found by which the tyranny of public opinion
can be either lessened or evaded, and by which
members of the intelligent minority can come to
know each other and enjoy each other’s society.
In a good many cases unnecessary timidity makes
the trouble worse than it need be. Public opinion is
always more tyrannical towards those who
obviously fear it than towards those who feel
indifferent to it. A dog will bark more loudly and
bite more readily when people are afraid of him
than when they treat him with contempt, and the
human herd has something of this same
characteristic. If you show that you are afraid of
them, you give promise of good hunting, whereas if
you show indifference, they begin to doubt their
own power and therefore tend to let you alone. I
am not, of course, thinking of extreme forms of
defiance. If you hold in Kensington the views that
are conventional in Russia, or in Russia the views
that are conventional in Kensington, you must
accept the consequences. I am thinking, not of such
extremes but of much milder lapses from