Sunday, August 29, 2010 – The Face of the Crowd
Everyone knows that the mind will not be kept from contemplating what it loves in the midst of crowds and business. Hence come those frequent absences, so observable in conversation; for whilst the body is confined to present company, the mind is flown to that which it delights in. ~ Mary Astell
Business today consists in persuading crowds. ~ T. S. Eliot
Every crowd has a silver lining. ~ P. T. Barnum
A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity. ~ Alexander Pope
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas. ~ Jean Cocteau
The future belongs to crowds. ~ Don DeLillo
I knew nothing of the real life of a musician, but I seemed to see myself standing in front of great crowds of people, playing my accordion. ~ Lawrence Welk
If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds. ~ Alice Meynell
Youth doesn’t need friends – it only needs crowds. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald
The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it. ~ Will Rogers
You stick your head above the crowd and attract attention and sometimes somebody will throw a rock at you. That’s the territory. You buy the land, you get the Indians. ~ David Lee Roth
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Insanity in individuals is rare – but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.~ Soren Kierkegaard
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. ~ Max Beerbohm
The average man’s opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself. ~ Bertrand Russell
The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that they are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way. ~ Cyril Connolly
The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
You will never escape the will of the mob; about the best anyone has ever figured out how to do is herd them into voting booths. ~ Barry Shein
Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world besides the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment? ~ Henry Miller
The American people, taken one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the middle ages. ~ Henry Louis Mencken
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
A mob is the method by which good citizens turn over the law and the government to the criminal or irresponsible classes. ~ Ray Stannard Baker
Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it. ~ Simone Weil
This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement – that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it – that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. ~ Walter Lippmann
Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them. ~ Gustave Le Bon
Just Above Sunset 