"Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct"
About this Quote
Austen slips a needle under the skin of Enlightenment confidence: that “general” opinion has a kind of democratic authority. On its face, the line flatters consensus, treating the crowd as a rough instrument of truth. But “usually” is doing the real work. It’s a prim little escape hatch that keeps the statement from becoming a principle. Austen isn’t endorsing the mob; she’s watching how people outsource judgment to it.
In her world, “general opinion” isn’t the voice of an informed public so much as the sum of drawing-room reputations, parish gossip, and class reflexes. Consensus functions like social weather: everyone talks about it, everyone adjusts to it, no one admits they’re afraid of it. The line captures a psychological reality Austen returns to repeatedly: people want to be correct, but they want even more to be safe. Agreeing with what’s “general” offers both. It’s the quickest route to moral comfort without the inconvenience of moral thinking.
The subtext is also a quiet indictment of how communities decide what’s “correct” in the first place. General opinion often tracks what’s legible and respectable, not what’s true. It rewards performances of propriety, punishes ambiguity, and turns private complexity into public shorthand. Austen’s irony is subtle: consensus can be “usually correct” precisely because society trains people to act as if it is. When everyone’s incentives point toward the same story, the story hardens into fact.
It’s a line that reads like common sense and lands like a warning: the majority is accurate right up until it’s disastrously not, and by then, everyone will insist they always believed it.
In her world, “general opinion” isn’t the voice of an informed public so much as the sum of drawing-room reputations, parish gossip, and class reflexes. Consensus functions like social weather: everyone talks about it, everyone adjusts to it, no one admits they’re afraid of it. The line captures a psychological reality Austen returns to repeatedly: people want to be correct, but they want even more to be safe. Agreeing with what’s “general” offers both. It’s the quickest route to moral comfort without the inconvenience of moral thinking.
The subtext is also a quiet indictment of how communities decide what’s “correct” in the first place. General opinion often tracks what’s legible and respectable, not what’s true. It rewards performances of propriety, punishes ambiguity, and turns private complexity into public shorthand. Austen’s irony is subtle: consensus can be “usually correct” precisely because society trains people to act as if it is. When everyone’s incentives point toward the same story, the story hardens into fact.
It’s a line that reads like common sense and lands like a warning: the majority is accurate right up until it’s disastrously not, and by then, everyone will insist they always believed it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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