E. L. Doctorow Quotes

Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass.

It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it.

It is property which has made tyrants and not tyrants property.

“Capital” is a sort of cabalistic word, like “Church” or “State,” or any other of those general terms which are invented by those who fleece the rest of mankind to conceal the hand that shears them.

A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.

Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socioeconomic ploys — legally enacted game-playing — agreed upon only between overwhelmingly powerful socioeconomic individuals and by them imposed upon human society and its all unwitting members.

Nations are herds of cattle

Davos is where billionaires tell millionairs what middle class people think.

I do not use words like 'liberal' or 'conservative.' You can ask me a question, and I will give you an answer. Those are words rich people on television use to divide and conquer.

It's much easier to gain control over a mass population when you pit them against each other.

There's a lingering notion that elites continue to lead, and the masses will follow. This historic model of influence was predicated on the belief that elites have access to superior information and their interests are interconnected with those of the broader public.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.

The real bias of the media is not to the left or to the right, but to the thin strata of economic elites at the top of our society.

The anointed are helped to make yet another group feel like victims and to regard the anointed as their rescuers.

What we must eliminate are systems of representation that carry with them the authority which has become repressive because it doesn't permit or make room for interventions on the part of those represented.

Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

It's always been the case that you have the really rich, and the really poor. But hey, look, all the great empires have their periods where they rule the world, and then they crumble.

As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

It's very tough to get yourself around the idea that there could be a mechanism being used or abused to restrict and alter the society in which we live.

Woman already controls by not seeming to do so. Talk no more of her rights.

I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions are generated.

In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.

Tally-When you looked around at everyone else how come you didn’t notice they were brain damaged? Az - We didn’t have much to compare our fellow citizens with. Only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people, more engaged, but that was hardly a surprise. History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation there were wars and mass hatred and clear cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn’t a far cry from how humanity was in the rusty era. These days we’re just a bit easier to manage.

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.