Quotes About Plebs

Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.

rising up starkly over the snowy plain, and that the plebs were flocking out

This non-proletarianised plebs has been racialist when it has been colonialist; it has been nationalist - chauvinist - when it has been armed; and it has been fascist when it has become the police force.These ideological effects on the plebs have been uncontestable and profound.

But the enthusiasm of the urban plebs for the gods of the Delta caused some disturbances. In 59 BC, when the Senate ordered the destruction of the altars of Serapis, Harpocrates and Anubis, they were very soon reinstated 'owing to the violence of the people's intervention

During one never-to-be-forgotten confrontation over a debt crisis in 493 BC, the entire population withdrew its labor. The plebs evacuated Rome and encamped on a neighboring hill. It was an inspired tactic. The Patricians were left in charge—but of empty streets.

'The Tube' was the first time the plebs had gone on the television. The lunatics taking over the asylum.

Now it was all over. Once it had done its job, the plebs had been bled white in the interests of public hygiene, while the jovial bourgeois lorded it over the country, putting his trust in the power of his money and the contagiousness of his stupidity.

Gehen Sie nicht gern ins Kino, Fermin? Im Vertrauen gesagt, mich lässt diese siebte Kunst völlig kalt. Meiner Meinung nach ist das nichts weiter als Nahrung zur Verdummung der verrohten Plebs, schlimmer als Fussball oder Stierkämpfe. Der Cinematograph ist entstanden als eine Erfindung zur Unterhaltung der analphabetischen Massen und fünfzig Jahren später hat sich daran nichts geändert.