quotations about mobs
A hungry mob is an angry mob.
BOB MARLEY
"Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)", Natty Dread
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Origins of Totalitarianism
You cannot conceive the many without the one.
PLATO
Parmenides
Everything bigger than life attracts a crowd.
GUNTER GRASS
My Century
But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.
RAY STANNARD BAKER
McClure's Magazine, 1905
There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
OSCAR WILDE
Miscellaneous Aphorisms: The Soul of Man
The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees.
MARTIN LUTHER
Whether Soldiers Can Also Be in a State of Grace
Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.
NOVALIS
Bluthenstaub
It is an easy and a vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them, is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
STANISLAW JERZY LEC
Unkempt Thoughts
Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand.
FREDERICK THE GREAT
letter to Voltaire, July 7, 1737
"Hush. Don't ask any questions. It's always best on these occasions to do what the mob do."
"But suppose there are two mobs?" suggested Mr. Snodgrass.
"Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pickwick.
CHARLES DICKENS
The Pickwick Papers
The mob have neither judgment nor principle, ready to brawl at night for the reverse of what they desired in the morning.
TACITUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The mob is a sort of bear; while your ring is through its nose, it will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip, and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.
JANE PORTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
The crowd has a way of being right.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
The mob are more restless than the waves of the sea.
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.
JOHN PERRY BARLOW
interview, ReasonOnline, August 2004
Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question.
CRISS JAMI
Healology
Disruption never helps your cause. It just looks like you're afraid to have rational discussion.
BARNEY FRANK
towh hall meeting, August 18, 2009
Loners live among the mob, so the mob mistakes us for its own, presuming and assuming. When the mob gets too close, the truth is revealed. Running or walking away, chased or free, any which way, we tell the mob in effect I don't need you.
ANNELI RUFUS
Party of One