quotations about mobs
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
A hungry mob is an angry mob.
BOB MARLEY
"Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)", Natty Dread
The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
STANISLAW JERZY LEC
Unkempt Thoughts
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
You cannot conceive the many without the one.
PLATO
Parmenides
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 hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob -- not the mob itself.
JONAH GOLDBERG
"Do Liberals Live Under a Tyranny of Cliches?", NPR, May 2, 2012
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
"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
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
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
Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.
NOVALIS
Bluthenstaub
Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.
EMILE ZOLA
The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories
A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know--doesn't say much for them, does it?
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
The mob are more restless than the waves of the sea.
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand.
FREDERICK THE GREAT
letter to Voltaire, July 7, 1737
Every time the Mob puts the pressure on a good man, tries to stop him from doing his duty as a citizen, it's a crucifixion.
BUDD SCHULBERG
On the Waterfront
Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.
JOHN PERRY BARLOW
interview, ReasonOnline, August 2004