George Orwell - Jordan Maxwell - The Sound of Fury 1950 - Niccolo Machiavelli - Hannah Arendt - Paul Foot - Bertrand Russell - William Shakespeare - Jaron Lanier - Rome Revealed TV - Charles Dickens - Horace Walpole - Frank Lloyd Wright - Edgar Cayce - Edgar Allan Poe - William Powell - Diogenes - Herodotus - Harper Lee - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Ida Wells - George Carlin - Euripides - Neil deGrasse Tyson TV - D H Lawrence - P J O’Rourke - Angela Davis - Murdered by a Mob TV -
Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. ‘Anything,’ he thinks, ‘any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.’ He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and – in the shape of rich men – is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as ‘smart’ hotels. ibid.
The Mafia and the mob runs this country. And the Catholic Church is behind the mob. Period. Jordan Maxwell, lecture The Illuminati
Democracy is a very bad form of government because the people can be misled ... It’s the rule of the mob. Jordan Maxwell, Matrix of Power
In a democracy there is no place for mob violence. The Sound of Fury 1950 starring starring Frank Lovejoy & Lloyd Bridges & Kathleen Ryan & Richard Carlson & Katherine Locke & Adale Jergens & Art Smith et al, director Cyril Endfield, Sheriff
For, besides what has been said, it should be borne in mind that the temper of the multitude is fickle, and that while it is easy to persuade them of a thing, it is hard to fix them in that persuasion. Wherefore, matters should be so ordered that when men no longer believe of their own accord, they may be compelled to believe by force. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince chIII
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
When five or six million adult people in a population of some forty million adults are struggling on the very rim of existence, utterly without hope, the people with property get scared.
The greater their property, the more ill-gotten their gains, the more scared they become. They seek for their protection bodies of armed and powerful men who will keep the mob at bay. The more desperate the mob become, the more repressive is the power ranged against them. Paul Foot, Confessions & Repressions, 1988
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays
And still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted, and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty nightcaps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked Caesar. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar I ii 243-248, Casca to Cassius & Brutus
Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviours. Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget
Even the mightiest emperor fears the mob. Rome Revealed: Ancient Superpower, National Geographic 2010
‘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, Pickwick Papers
Our supreme governors the mob. Horace Walpole, 1743
Humanity to me is not a mob. A mob is a degeneration of humanity. A mob is humanity going the wrong way. Frank Lloyd Wright
Ye are to have a division in thine own land before there is the second of the Presidents that next will not live through his office – a mob rule! Edgar Cayce
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led. Edgar Allan Poe
Cultivate solitude and quiet and a few sincere friends, rather than mob merriment, noise and thousands of nodding acquaintances. William Powell
The mob is the mother of tyrants. Diogenes
There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob. Herodotus
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
A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd. Ida B Wells, cited Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, 1995
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. George Carlin
When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. Euripides, Orestes
Alexandra Library: What will happen the next time the Mob comes? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey: Unafraid of the Dark XIII, Fox 2014
Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions. D H Lawrence, Pornography and Obscenity, 1929
Fascism is very much a mob movement. P J O’Rourke
Whoever challenged the racial hierarchy was marked a potential victim of the mob. The endless roster of the dead came to include every sort of insurgent – from the owners of successful Black businesses and workers pressing for higher wages to those who refused to be called ‘boy’ and the defiant women who resisted white men’s sexual abuses. Yet public opinion had been captured, and it was taken for granted that lynching was a just response to the barbarous sexual crimes against white womanhood. Angela Davis, Women, Race & Class, 1983