mass mentality Quotes

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.

The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers. A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind. A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals.

Instead of recognizing the State as ‘the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men,’ the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent. The mass-man, ignorant of its history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will.

The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.

The majority cannot reason; it has no judgement. It has always placed its destiny in the hands of others; it has followed its leaders even into destruction. The mass has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth.

The world chooses to think what the world thinks.

. . .the larger the crowd, the more probable that that which it praises is folly, and the more improbable that it is truth; and the most improbable of all that it is any eternal truth.

I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of country who never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet. I pity them and the nation dependent on such for its existence. I am thankful, however that, though such people make a great noise, the masses are not like them.

There is no God, cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values — is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account.

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the public?

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty becasue they have no intellect.

Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. I don't know all the keys to success, but one key to failure is to try to please everyone.

We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation and paradox, wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, some of us are tossed helpless . . . ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants -- PUBLIC OPINION.

The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee.

It is proof of a bad cause when it is applauded by the mob.

The masses, the public, is too strict.

Every numerous assembly is a mob; everything there depends on instantaneous turns.

Such is the nature of crowds: either they are humble and servile or arrogant and dominating. They are incapable of making moderate use of freedom, which is the middle course, or of keeping it.

The terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever. This is what comes of a Protestant morality, that I, as a (thank God) typical Spaniard, found unnerving.

The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café.

Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.

In every generation, there's a strong tendency for everyone to think like everyone else.

The rabble estimate few things according to their real value, most things according to their prejudices.