Quotes About Masses

Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam.

Retribution is not slow in coming," I wrote in the Kornilov days. "Hounded, persecuted, slandered, our party never grew as rapidly as it is growing now. And this process will spread from the capitals to the provinces, from the towns to the country and the army . . . Without ceasing for a moment to be the class organization of the proletariat, our party will be transformed in the fire of persecution into a true leader of all the oppressed, downtrodden, deceived and hounded masses.

The rule of the toilers has for the first time been realised in the soviet system, which, whatever its immediate historic vicis-situdes, has penetrated as irrevocably into the consciousness of the masses as did in its day the system of the Reformation or of pure democracy.

A revolutionary uprising that spreads over a number of days can develop victoriously only in case it ascends step by step, and scores one success after another. A pause in its growth is dangerous; a prolonged marking of time, fatal. But even successes by themselves are not enough; the masses must know about them in time, and have time to understand their value. It is possible to let slip a victory at the very moment when it is within arm's reach. This has happened in history.

The importance of Chinese Communism does not depend on the intellectual level of its dogmas. Mao was one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, manipulator of large masses of human beings in the twentieth century, and the ideology he used for the purpose is significant by reason of its effectiveness, not only in China but in other parts of the Third World.

A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses.

To my utter despair I have discovered, and discover every day anew, that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion.

Are the mass media on the side of the power in the manipulation of the masses, or are they on the side of the masses in the liquidation of meaning, in the violence perpetrated on meaning, and in fascination? Is it the media that induce fascination in the masses, or is it the masses who direct the media into the spectacle?

The strategy of power has long seemed founded on the apathy of the masses. The more passive they were, the more secure it was. But this logic is only characteristic of the bureaucratic and centralist phase of power. And it is this which today turns against it: the inertia it has fostered becomes the sign of its death.

To choose the wrong strategy is a serious matter. All the movements that only play on liberation, emancipation, on the resurrection of a subject of history, of the group, of the word based on "consciousness raising," indeed a "raising of the unconscious" of subjects and of the masses, do not see that they are going in the direction of the system, whose imperative today is precisely the overproduction and regeneration of meaning and of speech.

Gut reaction against yobbery, the masses and solid Frenchness. But an equally visceral distaste for the elite, for castes, culture and the nomenklatura. Do we have to choose between the moronic masses and the arrogant privileged classes (particularly when they have an odour of demagogic humility about them)? No solution.

Estamos portanto no ponto paradoxal em que as massas se recusam ao batismo do social, que é ao mesmo tempo o do sentido e da liberdade. Não fazemos delas uma nova e gloriosa referência. Porque elas não existem.

Todos os grandes esquemas da razão sofreram o mesmo destino. Eles só descreveram sua trajetória, só seguiram o curso de sua história no diminuto topo da camada social detentora do sentido (e em particular do sentido social), mas no essencial somente penetraram nas massas ao preço de um desvio, de uma distorção radical.

não há equivalente ao caráter cego, não-representativo, desprovido de sentido, do ato terrorista, senão o comportamento cego, desprovido de sentido e além da representação que é o das massas. Eles têm isso de comum porque são a forma atual mais radical, mais exacerbada, de negação de qualquer sistema representativo.

Bir baÅŸka deyiÅŸle kitlelerin Beaubourg'a koÅŸmalar?n?n nedeni yüzlerce y?ld?r kendilerini yoran, b?kt?ran bu kültür kar??s?nda salya ak?tmak deÄŸil, her zaman nefret etmiÅŸ olduklar? bir kültürün yas?n? tutma f?rsat?n? kitle hâlinde ilk kez ellerine geçirmiÅŸ olmalar?d?r.

I didn't want to be in the teeming mass of the working class.... I didn't want to live and die in the same place with only a week at the seaside in between. I dreamed of escape -- but what is terrible about industrialisation is that it makes escape necessary. In a system that generates masses, individualism is the only way out. But then what happens to community -- to society?

When studying the fundamental characteristics of a crowd we stated that it is guided almost exclusively by unconscious motives.

Little adapted to reasoning, crowds, on the contrary, are quick to act. As the result of their present organisation their strength has become immense. The dogmas whose birth we are witnessing will soon have the force of the old dogmas; that is to say, the tyrannical and sovereign force of being above discussion. The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings.

What he [the intellectual] should learn to do is to put what he has been able to salvage from the disciplines that taught him universal techniques, directly at the service of the masses. Intellectuals must learn to understand the universal that the masses want, in reality, in the immediate, at this very moment.

I had a style before I was signed, but now I'm developing my commercial sound as well as trying to strike a balance between authentic music and music that the masses will love.

Our world is a huge mess right now, and not big enough for masses of intolerant people.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.

Just remember that the masses are asses and you'll be just fine.

Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography.