Noam Chomsky - Blaise Pascal - Edmund Burke - William Shakespeare - Wentworth Dillon - John Dryden - Richard Hooker - Voltaire - Mae West - George Washington -
Such ideas have ample resonance until today, including Locke’s stern doctrine that common people should be denied the right even to discuss public affairs. This doctrine remains a basic principle of modern democratic states, now implemented by a variety of means to protect the operations of the state from public scrutiny: classification of documents on the largely fraudulent pretext of national security, clandestine operations, and other measures to bar the rascal multitude from the political arena. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
Any unity which doesn’t have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny. Blaise Pascal
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny. Edmund Burke
By the fool multitude, that choose by show,
Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach ...
I will not choose what many men desire,
Because I will not jump with common spirits
And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice II ix 25-26 & 30-32, Aragon to Portia
The multitude is always in the wrong. Wentworth Dillon, Essay on Translated Verse
If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, ’tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong: their judgement is a mere lottery. John Dryden
He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be; shall never want attentive and favourable hearers. Richard Hooker, On the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1593
To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters. Voltaire
You can say what you like about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins. Mae West
In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude. George Washington