Quotes About Masses

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference.

The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously moulding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way. Given

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree.

If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.

Lo importante no es tanto la moral de las masas, cuya actitud resulta irrelevante con tal de que sigan trabajando, sino la moral del propio Partido. Hasta del miembro más humilde se espera que sea competente, trabajador e incluso inteligente dentro de unos límites, pero también es necesario que sea un fanático crédulo e ignorante...

Scopo essenziale della guerra è la distruzione, non necessariamente di vite umane, ma di quanto viene prodotto dal lavoro degli uomini. La guerra è un modo per mandare in frantumi, scaraventare nella stratosfera, affondare negli abissi marini, materiali che altrimenti potrebbero essere usati per rendere le masse troppo agiate e, a lungo andare, troppo intelligenti.

that the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail, cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They

El escritor de hoy tiende a usar cada vez menos palabras y cada vez más simples, tanto porque la cultura de masas ha diluido el concepto de cultura literaria como porque la suma de realidades que el lenguaje podía expresar de forma necesaria y suficiente ha disminuido de manera alarmante.

The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.

Periodically, the workers do revolt against bourgeois society, not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions.

Over-dependence on finite resources, like oil, ignores the ability of our great minds to develop alternative energy for the masses, and in doing so ignores climate change and sets up our students and workforce for failure by not educating them about the needs of our future.

I think that ego-driven leaders will be a thing of the past because the masses are tired.

One can see the professionals and intellectuals talking to their rural brethren with an amused and condescending smile. They forget that but for the toiling rural masses, all their professional training and erudition would collapse like a castle of cards.

A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution.

Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.

Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear the most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution.

Wealth has more and more increased, and at the same time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor.

I have never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game--the masses. - Mark Twain, a Biography

They all espoused a return to preindustrial fabrication methods and a commitment to bringing good design to the masses. Yet they wound up producing objects—even those not made from intrinsically precious materials—that were so labor-intensive that they could never compete with machine-made items that the working class could afford, and thus became luxury goods for the rich.

The war could not be won 'unless we are supported by the great masses of the labouring classes of this country'.

In a world facing the revolt of ragged and hungry masses of God's children; in a world torn between the tensions of East and West, white and colored, individuals and collectivists; in a world whose cultural and spiritual power lags so far behind her technological capabilities that we live each day on the verge of nuclear co-annihilation; in this world, nonviolence is no longer an option for intellectual analysis, it is an imperative for action

Every jump of technical progress leaves the relative intellectual development of the masses a step behind, and thus causes a fall in the political-maturity thermometer. It takes sometimes tens of years, sometimes generations, for a people's level of understanding gradually to adapt itself to the changed state of affairs, until it has recovered the same capacity for self-government as it had already possessed at a lower stage of civilization.