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
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
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
There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
OSCAR WILDE
Miscellaneous Aphorisms: The Soul of Man
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
"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
Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand.
FREDERICK THE GREAT
letter to Voltaire, July 7, 1737
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
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
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 crowd has a way of being right.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
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
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
When men take it in their heads to-day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838