Multitudes Quotes

• Live for today. Multitudes of people have failed to live for today.... What they have had within their grasp today they have missed entirely, because only the future has intrigued them.

  William Allen White

  People, Live For Today, Intrigued

  "Forbes", Forbes Incorporated, p. 42, 1953.

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• The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.

  Blaise Pascal

  Confusion, Unity, Tyranny

  Blaise Pascal (1829). “Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects”, p.226

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• Breaking with old friends is one of the most painful of the changes in all that piling up of a multitude of small distasteful changes that constitutes growing older.

  John Dos Passos

  Change, Break Up, Being Alone

  John Dos Passos (2010). “The Ground We Stand on: The History of a Political Creed”, p.443, Transaction Publishers

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• Those who have wrought great changes in the world never succeeded by gaining over chiefs; but always by exciting the multitude. The first is the resource of intrigue and produces only secondary results, the second is the resort of genius and transforms the universe.

  Martin Van Buren

  Genius, World, Firsts

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• You can say what you like about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins.

  Mae West

  Funny, Fashion, Women

  "The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West".

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• The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Education, Teacher, Trying

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• The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

  Arthur Koestler

  Individuality, Definitions, Divided

  Darkness at Noon (1941) (translation by Daphne Hardy)

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• There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still.

  Goldwin Smith

  Country, Black, Would Be

  Goldwin Smith (1881). “Lectures and Essays”, New York : Macmillan

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• In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Political, Majority, United States

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1840). “Democracy in America”, p.18

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• Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Sarcastic, Inspiration

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.257, Courier Corporation

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• To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.

  Paul Valery

  Writing, Numbers, Unexpected

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• The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

  Voltaire

  Book, Beer, Ignorant

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• To be old is to be part of a huge and ordinary multitude... the reason why old age was venerated in the past was because it was extraordinary.

  Ronald Blythe

  Past, Age, Ordinary

  Ronald Blythe (1979). “The View in Winter: Reflections on Old Age”, p.17, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Words will not be able to ever express how sorry I am for this, and I have profound regret and sorrow for the multitude of mistakes and harm I have caused.

  Jack Abramoff

  Im Sorry, Regret, Mistake

  "Lobbyist Abramoff Pleads Guilty to Fraud Charges". "All Things Considered" with Michele Norris, www.npr.org. January 3, 2006.

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• We should all aspire in life to do a multitude of things well - to be a great father, to be a good husband, to be a good lover, you know, to try to do things the best you can is very important to me.

  Matthew Modine

  Husband, Father, Important

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• A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.

  William Wordsworth

  Stupid, Mind, Acting

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth (1815). “Poems”, p.370

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• The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

  Edmund Burke

  Tyrants, Tyranny

  George Croly, Edmund Burke (1840). “A Memoir of the Political Life of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: With Extracts from His Writings”, p.11

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• A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.

  Saul Bellow

  Impression, Novel, Balanced

  Speech on receiving the Nobel Prize, 1976

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• In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them.

  Thomas Huxley

  Art, Believe, Two

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.57, Cambridge University Press

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• The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.

  Denis Diderot

  Jesus, Blood, Literature

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

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• Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Selfish, Sensual, Failing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1958). “Emerson: A Modern Anthology”

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• I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person.

  Audrey Hepburn

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  "How to be Lovely". Book by Melissa Hellstern, 2005.

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• Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

  Immanuel Kant

  Mean, Voice, Numbers

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• Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.

  William Ellery Channing

  Spiritual, Judging, Mind

  William Ellery Channing (1840). “Lectures on the elevation of the labouring portion of the community”, p.35

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• A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

  Charles Baudelaire

  War, Party, Book

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