quotations about mobs
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
attributed, Day's Collacon
Disruption never helps your cause. It just looks like you're afraid to have rational discussion.
BARNEY FRANK
towh hall meeting, August 18, 2009
Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question.
CRISS JAMI
Healology
Loners live among the mob, so the mob mistakes us for its own, presuming and assuming. When the mob gets too close, the truth is revealed. Running or walking away, chased or free, any which way, we tell the mob in effect I don't need you.
ANNELI RUFUS
Party of One
The mob are more restless than the waves of the sea.
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.
EMILE ZOLA
The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories
Every time the Mob puts the pressure on a good man, tries to stop him from doing his duty as a citizen, it's a crucifixion.
BUDD SCHULBERG
On the Waterfront
Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labor in your fields and serve in your houses -- that man your navy, and recruit your army -- that have enabled you to defy the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob; but do not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people.
LORD BYRON
debate on the Frame-Work Bill in the House of Lords, February 27, 1812
A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
The sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.
DAN SIMMONS
The Fall of Hyperion
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Marginalia"
The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
You have no security, no arm of defence, so long as there are among you the materials out of which mobs are made, or tools for the lawless or the ill-disposed to use. Your only safety is in education, in an education which trains up the whole people to love law and order, which trains them up to love virtue and freedom, and which fits them to maintain freedom in the state, by first maintaining it in themselves.
ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON
An Address on Intemperance delivered in Walpole, New Hampshire, February 26, 1833