Mass Quotes - Page 34

• How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion.

  Molly Ivins

  Party, Government, Political

  Molly Ivins (2010). “You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You”, p.18, Vintage

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• History is made by masses of people. One man, or ten men, don't start the earthquakes and don't stop them either. Only hero worshipers and ignorant historians think they do.

  Lillian Hellman

  Hero, Men, Thinking

  Lillian Hellman (1944). “The Searching Wind: A Play in Two Acts”, New York : The Viking Press

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• Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion--the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater, the passion for making them all prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindly masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light.

  Matthew Arnold

  Hate, Passion, Men

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.790, Delphi Classics

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• Where no individual in a community is denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no one can tell where or how or when the infection will spread.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Rights, Class, Community

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Ann Dexter Gordon (1997). “The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: In the school of anti-slavery, 1840 to 1866”, p.410, Rutgers University Press

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• Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Fashion, Hot, Avant Garde

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• The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.

  Susan Sontag

  Government, Borders, World

  "Why Are We in Kosovo?" by Susan Sontag, www.nytimes.com. May 2, 1999.

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• It cannot be too strongly asserted that the insistence on blind, unreasoning faith is due mainly to the maintenance of a subject-matter upon which there was no knowledge, namely the 'other world'; and that this basis was assumed because of early man's preoccupation with death. It is, unfortunately, quite possible to believe a thing which is contradicted by facts, especially if the facts are not generally known; but if the whole position on which we rested our religions had been visibly opposed by what we did know, even the unthinking masses would, in time, have noticed it.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Faith, Believe, Men

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (2003). “His Religion and Hers: A Study of the Faith of Our Fathers and the Work of Our Mothers”, p.228, Rowman Altamira

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• Coupled with Usury, Unrestricted Competition destroys the small man for the profit of the great and in so doing produces that mass of economically unfree citizens whose very political freedom comes in question because it has no foundation in any economic freedom, that is, any useful proportion of property to support it. Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Men, Support

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• One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance.

  Edward Snowden

  Law, Nsa, Division

  "Snowden: NSA pressured EU into creating ‘European bazaar’ of spy networks". www.rt.com. March 7, 2014.

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• Ending mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. Yet while we have reformed this one program, many others remain.

  Edward Snowden

  Rights, Phones, Nsa

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• I made songs really for myself - I didn't ever expect to put it out there and make this a record for mass consumption, this was really just a way for me to get out of my own situation and reclaim that part of myself - so when making the songs, I wanted a testament to what I'd gone through, I wanted a snapshot of those moments.

  Frank Iero

  Song, Gone, Snapshots

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• Most people will reach a point where, whatever their ideology, they will relent, or conform, and that keeps them kind of in the general mass of people. And for those who find that they can't, all of sudden they leave the general mass, they find that they become exceptions, and exceptional, and often this makes them public.

  David Bezmozgis

  People, Kind, Exceptional

  The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. September 23, 2014.

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• Cocktail parties ... are usually not parties at all but mass ceremonials designed to clear up at one great stroke a wealth of obligations.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Party, Cocktails, Cocktail Parties

  Phyllis McGinley (1965). “Sixpence in Her Shoe”

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• The masses are still ungrateful or ignorant. They prefer murder, poisonings, and crimes generally to a literature possessed of style and feeling.

  George Sand

  Ungrateful, Feelings, Ignorant

  George Sand (2009). “Letters of George Sand”, p.140, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The slave power dares anything, and it can be conquered only by the united masses of the people. From Congress to the people, I appeal.

  Charles Sumner

  People, Slavery, Congress

  Nassau William Senior, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, Charles Sumner (1856). “American slavery: repr. of an article [by N.W. Senior, entitled Slavery in the United States] on 'Uncle Tom's cabin' [by H.E.B. Stowe] and of mr. Sumner's speech of the 19th and 20th of May, 1856. With a notice of the events which followed that speech”, p.143

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• a steady diet of mass culture is a form of deprivation.

  Pauline Kael

  Mass Culture, Deprivation, Form

  Pauline Kael (1994). “For keeps”, E P Dutton

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• anything that becomes a cult, or a mass movement, loses its moral and spiritual value. The crusade has to be personal, individual. As soon as it becomes collective it loses its purpose.

  Rosamond Lehmann

  Change, Spiritual, Purpose

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• We have more freedom of the press than any other country in a similar position. Even way back in the frightened '50s, Communists, for example, could publish their magazine. The KKK published their own books. But face it, the mass media is controlled by money.

  Pete Seeger

  Country, Book, Media

  Source: portside.org

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• No mass appeal. Ergo no profit. Ergo no use. The current World Credo.

  Lucille Kallen

  Use, World, Appeals

  Lucille Kallen (1980). “C.B. Greenfield: the Tanglewood murder”, Simon & Schuster

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• The art of leadership is a serious matter. One must not lag behind a movement, because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for to rush ahead is to lose contact with the masses. He who wished to lead a movement must conduct a fight on two fronts--against those who lag behind and those who rush ahead.

  Joseph Stalin

  Leadership, Art, Fighting

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• Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Loss, Men, Order

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1954). “Memoirs of Hadrian”

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• As one might expect in a society with mass communications and mass markets, the pseudo-ethic says that whatever is popular, is right. Where the traditional ethic derives its sanction from the superiority of a few, the pseudo-ethic derives its sanction from the inferiority of a great many. The pseudo-ethic is keyed, not to the spiritually gifted, but to the spiritually ungifted.

  Margaret Halsey

  Communication, Culture, Inferiority

  Margaret Halsey (1964). “The Corrupted Giant: A Speculation on American Politics and Morals”

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• Great truths always dwell a long time with small minorities, and the real voice of God is often that which rises above the masses, not that which follows them.

  Francis Lieber

  Truth, Real, Voice

  Francis Lieber (1853). “On Civil Liberty and Self-government”, p.366

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• The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.

  Jacques Ellul

  Men, Influence, Propaganda

  "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes". Book by Jacques Ellul, translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner, 1965.

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• Poor dusky children of slavery, men and women of my own race-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you, and the great masses of the North learned to look upon your helplessness with indifference-learned to speak of you as an idle, dependent race. Reason should have prompted kinder thoughts. Charity is ever kind.

  Elizabeth Keckley

  Dream, Children, Men

  Elizabeth Keckley (2016). “Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House”, p.52, Enhanced Media Publishing

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