Mass Quotes - Page 29

• There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Littles, Action

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.6, Hayes Barton Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and annul the directing minorities and put themselves in their place. Then, also, is produced the phenomenon of agglomeration, of "the full." For that reason, as Spengler has very well observed, it was necessary, just as in our day, to construct enormous buildings. The epoch of the masses is the epoch of the colossal.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Uprising, Minorities, Empires

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Country, Believe, Men

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it falls victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Block, Fall, Class

  47 Copy quote

• If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life--production, politics, and education--rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden.

  Emma Goldman

  Pride, Men, Numbers

  Emma Goldman (2012). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.69, Courier Corporation

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time.

  Karl Marx

  Class, Spare Time, Whole Life

  Karl Marx (2007). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production”, p.581, Cosimo, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The larger a star the shorter its life, but all the more fascinating its death. As it collapses within it’s body, the infalling material can be no longer be compressed; the star is blown to pieces; its shattered mass realeases out ward at the speed of light.

  Kelly Easton

  Stars, Light, Pieces

  4 Copy quote

• Caffeine is my shepherd; I shall not doze. It maketh me to wake in green pastures: It leadeth me beyond the sleeping masses. It restoreth my buzz.

  Bob Phillips

  Coffee, Sleep, Shepherds

  21 Copy quote

• The classical scholars have kept alive the tradition of the superiority of the ancient languages -- a kaleidoscopic mass of suffixes and prefixes, supposed to represent an infinite shading of meaning. It is a character they share with the Ojibway and the Zulu.

  Stephen Leacock

  Character, Alive, Language

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.49, University of Toronto Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was born and raised in the University of Chicago area and had an uneventful middle-class Catholic childhood. I had a heavy Catholic upbringing and Catholicism is terrible - it's the reason there were slaves. Mass every morning at seven o'clock during Lent. It's a totally negative, man-made religion.

  Chaka Khan

  Morning, Men, Class

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The artist may rightly venture the opinion that he does not convey ideas, does not preach, nor that he intents to convert people by using mass communication techniques.. .Better than handing out all kinds of wise advice, he could show life itself; he could awake forces lying dormant in everybody, he could launch an invitation to create direct and personal experiences.

  Antoni Tapies

  Wise, Lying, Communication

  "Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 - 2003" by Antoni Tapies, Kunsthalle Emden, edited by Achim Sommer, Altana, (p. 30), 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The intelligence community was absolutely uniform and uniformly wrong about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq).

  Laurence Silberman

  Mass Destruction, Iraq, Community

  Bush and Co-Chairs of the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities Press Conference, www.washingtonpost.com. March 31, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do have reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

  Joni Ernst

  Believe, Mass Destruction, Iraq

  "Iowa GOP Senate Candidate Still Believes There Were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq" by Patricl Caldwell, www.motherjones.com. May 12, 2014.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have discovered that exercise is strongly correlated with increased brain mass, better cognition, mood regulation, and new cell growth.

  Eric Jensen

  Exercise, Cells, Brain

  Eric Jensen (2005). “Teaching with the Brain in Mind”, p.3, ASCD

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

  John F. Kerry

  Mass Destruction, Guarantees That, Hussein

  John F. Kerry's Speech to the floor of the Senate, Congressional Record, November 9, 1997.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, Our World, Perfection

  "The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Only His Wings Remained", p. 54, 1985.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jelly-like mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell.

  James Joyce

  Ideas, Fire, Flames

  James Joyce (2005). “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, p.138, Collector's Library

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mass-murderers are simply people who have had ENOUGH.

  Quentin Crisp

  People, Had Enough, Murderer

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, 1968.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The word 'revolution' is a word for which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the labouring masses to their deaths; but which does not contain any content.

  Simone Weil

  Doe, Revolution, Dies

  Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.53, Routledge

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It really seems to me sometimes that the only hope is space. That is to say, perhaps the most energetic—in a bad sense—elements will move on to a new world in space. The problems of mass society will be transported into space, leaving behind this world as a kind of Europe, which then eventually tourists will visit. The Old World. I'm only half joking.

  Mary McCarthy

  Moving, Europe, Space

  4 Copy quote

• All the elements will be seen mixed together in a great whirling mass, now borne towards the centre of the world, now towards the sky; and now furiously rushing from the South towards the frozen North, and sometimes from the East towards the West, and then again from this hemisphere to the other.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Sky, Rushing, Together

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2015). “Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci: Complete & Illustrated”, p.989, eKitap Projesi via PublishDrive

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.

  John Ruskin

  Believe, Shadow, Building

  John Ruskin (1866). “The seven lamps of architecture”, p.70

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If two stones were placed... near each other, and beyond the sphere of influence of a third cognate body, these stones, like two magnetic needles, would come together in the intermediate point, each approaching the other by a space proportional to the comparative mass of the other.

  Johannes Kepler

  Two, Space, Together

  "Kepler" by Walter William Bryant, (p. 36), 1920.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fanaticism displays itself in the masses; but the masses were rarely fanaticised; and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.

  Lord Acton

  Politics, Politician, Crime

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.61, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo, Merelya marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.

  Arthur Hugh Clough

  Believe, Wine, Rome

  'Amours de Voyage' (1858) canto 1, pt. 2

  4 Copy quote

  Show source