Quotes about crowd
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“Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Feeling, Soul, Search, Help

“Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day- like writing a poem or saying a prayer.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Flowers, Sense

“That's the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective. Then you begin to feel crowded.”

John Updike book Rabbit Redux

Source: Rabbit Redux

Feeling

“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Self-Reliance

Solitude, Perfection

“They’re a rotten crowd’, I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Variant: They're a rotten lot," I shouted, across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.
Source: The Great Gatsby

“We heard the army before we saw it.
The noise was like a cannon barrage combined with a football stadium crowd- like every Patriots fan in New England was charging us with bazookas.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Football

“The devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds. He will not allow quietness.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot

Business

“I couldn't have thought of her more. Even vacancy was crowded with her.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

“And in the end, I lost him. I did it on purpose, the way Garance lost
Baptiste in the crowd. I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future.”

Susanna Kaysen (1948) American writer

Way, Future

“Nereus spun and expanded, turning into a killer whale, but I grabbed his dorsal fin as he burst out of the water.
A whole bunch of tourists went, "Whoa!"
I managed to wave at the crowd.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Water

“Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

People, Way, Question, Waiting

“Feeding a crowd?' the woman behind the counter asked.
Yes, ma'am,' Fang said sweetly. I thought.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Maximum Ride The Angel Experiment

“Homesickness hits hardest in the middle of a crowd in a large, alien city.”

Christos Tsiolkas (1965) Australian writer

Source: Barracuda

“Don't blame us," said my mother. "We didn't blow up half of Court, steal a dozen cars, call out a murderer in the middle of a crowd, or get our teenage friend crowned queen."

"Actually," said Abe, "Iblow up half of Court.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Cars

“It's never crowded along the extra mile”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds.”

Robert Henri book The Art Spirit

Source: The Art Spirit

World, Way

“She always camouflaged herself as a crowd. I've never been lonely, she said, but sometimes it's hard to think above the noise.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Thinking

“But I always say, one's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Girl

“If pinpointing God's presence were really that simple, then he supposed the beaches would be more crowded in the mornings. They would be filled with people on their own quests, instead of people jogging or walking their dogs or fishing in the surf.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

God, People, Dogs, Fish

“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Passion

“Even the intellectual crowd will have none of me. Physically, I look like one of them. Graying at the temples, I walk with a slight limp and wear thick glasses.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“A Witch is born out of the true hungers of her time,” she said. “I was born out of New York. The things that are most wrong here summoned me. ("Drink Entire: Against The Madness Of Crowds")”

Ray Bradbury book Long After Midnight

Source: Long After Midnight

Hunger, Drink, Time, Madness

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 1. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html (1804) Source: I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud

Tree, Dance

“Have you ever been going somewhere with a crowd and you're certain it's the wrong road and you tell them, but they won't listen, so you just have to plod along in what you know is the wrong direction till somebody more important gets the same idea?”

James Hilton Random Harvest

Source: Random Harvest

Idea

“A few said they'd be horses. Most said they'd be some sort of cat. My friend said she'd like to come back as a porcupine. I don't like crowds, she said.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Cats, Horse

“My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Lie, Sense

“If you're born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: Foundation

Sun

“A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Friendship
Essays (1625)

Love

“If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips.”

Robert Jordan The Fires of Heaven

Birgitte Silverbow
Variant: If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips.
Source: The Fires of Heaven (15 October 1993)

Smile

“I didn't know there were this many math guys," Hale said as they stepped onto the crowded concourse.
Kat cleared her throat.
"And women," he added. "Math women.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

Women, Guy

“The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?”

Christine Feehan book Dark Prince

Source: Dark Prince

Thinking

“A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: The Awful Rowing Toward God

Animals

“Jason’s heart lifted when he saw Nico di Angelo on the front lines with the Greeks, slashing his way through a crowd of two-headed men.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Men, Way, Heart

“The future belongs to crowds”

Don DeLillo Mao II

At Yankee Stadium
Source: Mao II (1991)

Future

“The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer ; Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées, Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher. "L’Albatros" [The Albatross] (translated by James McGowan, Oxford University Press, 1993) http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L%E2%80%99Albatros Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857) Source: Les Fleurs Du Mal

Love, Way

“4. You hear his voice in a crowd more than any other.”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 13

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

World, Appearance

“The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.”

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) Belgian writer

Source: Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

Night, Indifference

“Suddenly, I felt so helpless. If I hated the crowds but also my own company, where did that leave me?”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Hate

“Yes, I do enjoy walking at night. The world’s more to my liking then, not so loud, not so fast, not so crowded, and a good deal more mysterious.”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

World, Night

“Magnus held up a warning finger. "Don't overstep yourself, biscuit," he said, and moved past them, disappearing into the crowd around the portal.
"Biscuit?" said Simon.
"Believe it or not, he's called me that before," Clary said.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Past

“Feast, and your halls are crowded
Fast, and the world goes by
Succeed and give, and it helps you live
But no man can help you die”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

World, Help

“Nico jumped into the crowd, kicking groins, smacking faces with the flat of his blade, bashing helmets with his pommel. In ten seconds, the Romans all lay groaning and dazed on the ground.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant: The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.

Personality

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“A world that was crowded with people could still be a very lonely place.”

Jodi Picoult Plain Truth

Source: Plain Truth

People, World

“Catherine hoped at least to pass uncensured through the crowd. As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Hope, Dependency

“When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Source: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Travel, Time

“The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome — this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Source: The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

Women, Beauty

“Land?' Froi whispered. 'You're giving them land? I'm not worth the valley.'

'You're worth a kingdom,' Finnikin said, turning back to the crowd.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

“in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“The crowd quieted as a whole, but more than one creature cursed under his breath, "Not Regin."
A drunk hunched over the bar muttered, "That glowing one made me eat a transistor radio once.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Needs at Night's Edge

“He tapped my chest. 'Happy is here.' He tapped his own chest. 'Here.'
I looked down past my chin. 'Inside?'
'Inside.'
It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me than cabbage and turnips.”

Jerry Spinelli book Milkweed

Source: Milkweed

Happiness, Angels, Past

“As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

People, Jealousy, Reading

“Somewhere in the crowd was at least one potential friend who'd understand the fundamental value of goofing off.
Because if not, how boring would that be?”

Alyson Nöel book Radiance

Source: Radiance

Understanding

“I have always hated crowds. I like deserts, prisons, and monasteries. I have discovered, too, that there are fewer idiots at 3000 meters above sea level than down below.”

Jean Giono (1895–1970) French writer

Source: An Italian Journey

Hate, Sea

“Sir Beldevere: What makes you think she's a witch?
Peasant 3: Well, she turned me into a newt!
Sir Beldevere: A newt?
Peasant 3: [meekly after a long pause]… I got better.
Crowd: [shouts] Burn her anyway!”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

Source: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book): Mønti Pythøn Ik Den Hølie Gräilen

Thinking

“We’re always alone. You can be in a crowded room and still feel the bite of loneliness. Personally, I find that it bites deepest whenever others are around.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: The Guardian

Feeling, Personality, Loneliness

“Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Source: The Art Spirit: Notes, Articles, Fragments of Letters and Talks to Students, Bearing on the Concept and Technique of Picture Making, the Study of Art

Life, Idea

“Suppose death had a heart to love and to release you, to whom would he turn this passion, would you chose a person from the crowd there. A person to suffer as you suffer.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love, Death, Suffering, Passion

“I led the way toward the crowd, trying to look casual, like, Fly? Me? Nah.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Way, Flying

“Appearances are significant, and never more than in politics. You can always sway the crowd, provided you have a good story.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Appearance

“There are idiots in every crowd.”

Heather Graham (1970) actress from the United States

Source: Deadly Night

“Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Death, Women, Sport, Football

“It’s illegal to yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, right?” “It is.” “Well, I’ve whispered ‘Racism’ in a post-racial world.”

Paul Beatty book The Sellout

Source: The Sellout

World

“I read that speaking in front of a crowd is the number-one fear in America. I found that amazing. Number two was death. Number two! That means that, if you're ever at a funeral, you'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Death, Fear, Reading

“My heart applauds inside my ears, first like a roaring crowd, then slows and slows until it's a solitary person, clapping with unbridled sarcasm.
Clap. Clap.
Clap.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Heart, Personality

“If you appeal to the crowd, either by being humorous or brutal or eccentric, you gain favor.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Be the one to stand out in the crowd.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Good Morning, Cute

“Angel, a crowd of millions couldn’t hide you from me. I found you once. I’ll always find you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Angels

“As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Forbidden Reading, p. 281.
Source: A History of Reading (1996)

Reading

“Obviously it takes eight brains to come to one decision in this crowd. Good thing they have one another.”

Mari Mancusi (1974) American writer

Source: Girls That Growl

Decision

“Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

The Yogi Book. New York: Workman Publishing. 1997. ISBN 0-7611-1090-9, p. 16
What Time Is It? You Mean Now?: Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All, Simon and Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0743244532, p. 81.
Found in newspapers from the early twentieth century. Not attributed to Berra until 1962. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/
Disputed, Misattributed
Variant: It's so crowded, nobody goes there.

Funny

“What have you got against people?"
Finn hated crowds. Thousands of people bumping and churning. "Too many opinions.”

Laura Ruby American writer

Source: Bone Gap

Hate, People

“Chin held high, Miss Ohio beamed at an imagined crowd. "I want to be a motivational speaker."
"What are you going to motivate people to do?"
Smile still in place, she cut her eyes at Adina. "You know. Motivational… stuff.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

People, Smile, Imagination, Motivation

“I am stronger than words and I am bigger than the box I'm in, and then I see her in the crowd and I fall apart.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Box

“The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“Well…" St. Vincent walked slowly with her to the crowd of dancers. "I'm a wicked man who can, on occasion, be just a bit nice. And I've been searching for a nice girl who can, on occasion, be just a bit wicked.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: It Happened One Autumn

Search, Girl

“She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music was too private to sing in a house cram fall of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

People, Music, Singing, Housing

“I would like to thank the crowd, it was unbelievable, the support helps you push through those tough times. You need challenges in every game, they improve you as a cricketers…I don't know what to say, I am overwhelmed by”

Virat Kohli (1988) Indian cricket player

After guiding India to the World T20 semifinals, quoted on sports.ndtv, "Virat Kohli Proves His Era Has Begun, After Guiding India Into World T20 Semifinals" http://sports.ndtv.com/icc-world-twenty20-2016/news/256920-virat-kohli-proves-his-era-has-begun-after-guiding-india-into-world-t20-semifinals, March 27, 2016.

Game, Support, Time, Help

“Standardization develops a kind of mass mind, which in mature years renders men very susceptible to crowd appeal.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 74

Men

“We comprehend… that nuclear power is a real danger for mankind, that over-crowding of the planet is the greatest danger of all. We have understood that the destruction of the environment is another enormous danger. But I truly believe that the lack of adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude. It is as serious a defect as being without memory. What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Memory

“He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.”

Arthur Symons book The Symbolist Movement in Literature

Gérard de Nerval.
The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899)

Beauty, Perfection

“At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream," was prepared to ask the right question: "Which side is the federal government on?" That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence, strange, considering how often this same government had been willing to intervene outside the country, often with overwhelming force.
John Lewis and SNCC had reason to be angry. John had been beaten bloody by a white mob in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but done nothing itself except to have FBI agents take notes. Instead of insisting that blacks and whites had a right to ride the buses together, the Kennedy Administration called for a "cooling-off period," a moratorium on Freedom Rides.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

You Can't Be Neutral on A Moving Train (1994) Ch. 4: "My Name is Freedom": Albany, Georgia

Dreams, Spring, Question, Freedom

“Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linux 2.6.25.10, 2008-07-15, Torvalds, Linus, 2008-07-16 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/706950, 2000s, 2008

People, Thinking

“Like Christianity, Buddhism explained suffering. In forms that established themselves in China, Buddhism offered the same sort of comfort to bereaved survivors and victims of violence or of disease as Christian faith did in the Roman world. Buddhism of course originated in India, where disease incidence was probably always very high as compared with civilizations based in cooler climates; Christianity, too, took shape in the urban environments of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria where the incidence of infectious disease was certainly very high as compared to conditions in cooler and less crowded places. From their inception, therefore, both faiths had to deal with sudden death by disease as one of the conspicuous facts of human life. Consequently, it is not altogether surprising that both religions taught that death was a release from pain, and a blessed avenue of entry upon a delightful afterlife where loved ones would be reunited, and earthly injustices and pains amply compensated for.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.3.

Love, Life, Death, Pain

“The natural sciences did not advance in virtue of the universal appeal of rationality. Their theological, classicist and metaphysical opponents were not converted but displaced. All the ancient universities had to be compelled by outside pressure to make room for science; and most nations began to appreciate it only after succumbing to the weapons produced with its aid. To cut a long story short, scientific method has triumphed throughout the world because it bestowed upon those who practised it power over those who did not. Sorcery lost not because of any waning of its intrinsic appeal to the human mind, but because it failed to match the power created by science. But, though abandoned as a tool for controlling nature, incantations remain more effective for manipulating crowds than logical arguments, so that in the conduct of human affairs sorcery continues to be stronger than science.”

Stanislav Andreski (1919–2007) Polish-British sociologist

Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)

World, Nature, Universe, Science

“Yes, India is the land of the Gods par excellence… The experience of the divine presence in India is within the reach of anyone who searches even a little bit. The temples are full of flowers and offerings, and you only have to flow along with the crowd, melt into it and place yourself in the hands of the Gods. I do not advocate conversion to Hinduism, but I do recommend its inspiration. I told this to the brahmins that took me into their homes. One said, 'Establish your reawakened Paganism on a valid foundation and there'll come a day when it will catch on. It won't be long.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

As true Pagans, they feel no need to convert anyone.
Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

God, Feeling, Home, Search

“To watch people on their phones in a crowd is to notice how disconnected they seem; how unprepared for solitude they seem. Neurosis, yes. Novelty is the American neurosis.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

People, Solitude

“If you expect manners from modern newspapers you will be sorely disappointed in these democratic days. It is one of the blessings of modern democracy? If you were in America and did not give any interview, even then they would invent one? The press is a public institution; formerly, it was something dignified, but now the newspapers are the correct measure of the futility of human life…. It is the same with all other modern things… the press, the theatre, the radio; they drag down everything to the level of the crowd…. They succeed only if they can pamper the common man's tastes…. It is the same old question of the mass being pulled up by something higher. But, as it always happens, instead of being pulled up it is the mass that pulls everything down to its level….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

June 1, 1926
India's Rebirth

Life, Disappointment, Democracy, Question

“To become a crowd is to keep out death.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984), Ch. 15

Death

“Finally Jones came in with a blinding fastball, the way Sad Sam used to throw ’em, and Clemente unloaded. The wind was blowing in from left field that day, and blowing hard. This was 1960, remember, before the fences had been moved in, and nobody was hitting home runs at Candlestick. Not Mays, not Cepeda, not anybody. Clemente’s bat hit the ball, and the result absolutely clubbed the crowd into awed silence for a long moment. Right into that wet whipping wind the ball carried. Right on through, hit 120 feet high in a long soaring majestic parabola that came down finally over 450 feet away. There is just no way of telling how far Clemente’s home run blast would have traveled had it not been for that wind. Suffice it to say partisan Giant fans suddenly broke their shell-shocked silence and let loose a gagantic roar. For two innings the stadium buzzed. For days the Giants talked about it. Even today if you slip up behind a Giant pitcher and suddenly whisper in his ear: ‘Remember the home run Clemente hit?’ he’s likely to jump as high as if he’d been caught putting spit on baseballs.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Roberto Clemente: Arriba!" in Baseball Stars of 1962 (March 1962), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 115
Sports-related

Sadness, Way, Travel, Home

“When I have at last become like a statue through the exacerbation of my ego which has led me to this ultimate sclerosis... Then and only then will I at last be able to set this statue up and come out of myself into the crowd to go and see the world. No one will notice anything because they will all be looking at the statue and I will be able to go about, free at last... It's then that I shall realize my eternal dream: to become a newspaper reporter!”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote in 'The Dali News', Dimanche 27 November 1960, Salvador Dali; as cited in Dali and Me, Catherine Millet, - translation Trista Selous -, Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 8001 Zurich Switzerland, pp. 163-164
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1951 - 1960

World, Dreams

“When the Nobel award was announced I saw it as a personal triumph, an achievement for me and my collaborators -- a recognition for a very remarkable discovery, for reaching the goal I had pursued for 7 years. But when I sat in that crowded hall and I saw the sea of western faces surrounding me, and I, the only Indian, in my turban and closed coat, it dawned on me that I was really representing my people and my country. I felt truly humble when I received the Prize from King Gustav; it was a moment of great emotion but I could restrain myself.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

On the occasion of the Noble Prize award presented to him in 1930 by King Gustova in Stokholm Raman observed Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:A Legend of Modern Indian Science, 22 November 2013, Official Government of India's website Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/cvraman/raman1.htm,

People, Personality, Sea, Country