Quotes About Masses

When I first stepped into literature twenty-five years ago, I wanted to work on behalf of the oppressed, the working masses, and it seemed to me, mistakenly, that I would not find them among the Jews.

When I first went to Kmart, I was so excited that I could bring my kind of taste to the masses. They didn't have 100 percent cotton sheets at mass market in 1987. We made those in yellow and pink and pale blue.

Yiddish, originally, in Eastern Europe was considered the language of children, of the illiterate, of women. And 500 years later, by the 19th century, by the 18th century, writers realized that, in order to communicate with the masses, they could no longer write in Hebrew. They needed to write in Yiddish, the language of the population.

Who are these people who are taking these decisions of casting only young actors in films? It is the filmmakers and the film producers. I don't know if that is what the audience wants because I really believe that masses respond to a good story.

Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes?

Knowledge is power. The moment the masses acquire this power, control fades. And when control fades, chaos erupts.

Cruelty impresses, people want to be afraid of something. They want someone to whom they can submit with a shudder, the masses need that. They need something to dreed.

The Union of the Russian People helped invent a new style of right-wing politics—novel not just for Russia but for most of the world—a politics in a new key oriented toward the masses, public spaces, and direct action, a fascism avant la lettre.

When TV came, it was a very strong medium. It reached out to so many people and it could have made difference but we got into mundaneness of it.

Weakness is emanating from the crowd

The great achievements of western capitalism have rebounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.

The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires.

I think nuns are fun. I had a friend who was at a convent once, and really she said it was wizard and that the nuns were frightfully broadminded and allowed her to make up as much as she wanted to and have masses of boy friends call and take her out, but of course, she was Church of England really.

If religion, she also liked to say, is the opiate of the masses, fundamentalism is the amphetamine.

A more cynical formulation by the Roman historian Polybius:     Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.

Polybius:     Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.

The fact that people are massed anonymously together may be in one sense an alienation, but in another sense it is a condition of their emancipation.

The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.

Another characteristic of conflicts such as these," he said, gesturing toward the board, "is the propensity to demonize others. One way we do this is by lumping others into lifeless categories—bigoted whites, for example, lazy blacks, crass Americans, arrogant Europeans, violent Arabs, manipulative Jews, and so on. When we do this, we make masses of unknown people into objects and many of them into our enemies.

As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.

I also hold a settling of questions by the referendum to be an unsatisfactory procedure, because there are no simple political questions which can be answered merely by Yes and No. The masses are also more prone even than Parliaments to be led away by heterodox opinions, and to be swayed by vigorous ranting. It is impossible to formulate a wise internal or external policy in a popular assembly.

Art respects the masses, by confronting them as that which they could be, rather than conforming to them in their degraded state.

I have such respect and awe for journalists who are able to communicate important information to the masses without sobbing.

Religion is the opium of the masses.