Quotes about crowd
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“Slave-owners and rich men, among a crowd of slave-descended famishing labourers, lead probably a more anxious and toilsome life in protecting their property, and in enforcing obedience to their orders, than the slaves whose labour they extort.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827), p. 31

Life, Men

“I told myself that I could soon start to relish the state of being alone […], only to find as usual that I was stuck with myself.[…] Two's company, which is bad enough in all conscience, but one's a crowd.”

Kingsley Amis The Green Man

Maurice Allington in Ch. 2
The Green Man (1969)

Bad luck

“The direct knowledge of matter that mankind can acquire is a knowledge of the average behaviour and relations of the crowd of molecules.”

Joseph Larmor (1857–1942) Irish physicist and mathematician

[Bakerian lecture.―On the statistical and thermodynamical relations of radiant energy, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 83, 560, 1909, 82–95, 10.1098/rspa.1909.0080] (p. 82)

Knowledge, Relation ships

“It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary, nevertheless, to lay down such a principle, because the actual mortality in hospitals, especially in those of large crowded cities, is very much higher than any calculation founded on the mortality of the same class of diseases among patients treated out of hospital would lead us to expect. The knowledge of this fact first induced me to examine into the influence exercised by hospital construction on the duration and death-rate of cases received into the wards; and it led me to lay before the Social Science Association a paper reprinted with the present title. Since the publication of the first edition of that paper, great advances have been made in the adoption of sound principles of hospital construction; and there are already a number of examples of new hospitals realizing all, or nearly all, the conditions required for the successful treatment of the sick and maimed poor.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Notes on Hospitals 3rd Edition (1863), Preface

Death, Disease, Exercises, Knowledge

“Land monopoly—in the hands of individuals, corporations or syndicates—is at bottom the prime cause of the inequalities which obtain; which desolate fertile acres turned over to vast ranches and into bonanza farms of a thousand acres, where not one family finds a habitation, where muscle and brain are supplanted by machinery, and the small farmer is swallowed up and turned into a tenant or slave. While in large cities thousands upon thousands of human beings are crowded into narrow quarters where vice festers, where crime flourishes undeterred, and where death is the most welcome of all visitors.”

Timothy Thomas Fortune (1856–1928) American writer and activist

On the phenomenon that would come to be called primitive accumulation of capital, in Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South (1884)

Death, Family

“But an old man of venerable look
(Standing upon the shore amongst the crowds)
His eyes fixed upon us (on ship-board), shook
His head three times, overcast with sorrow's clouds:
And (straining his voice more, than well could brook
His aged lungs: it rattled in our shrouds)
Out of a science, practice did attest,
Let fly these words from an oraculous breast:O glory of commanding! O vain thirst
Of that same empty nothing we call fame!”

Luís de Camões Os Lusíadas

Stanzas 94–95 (tr. Richard Fanshawe); the Old Man of Restelo.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto IV
Original: (pt) Mas um velho d'aspeito venerando,
Que ficava nas praias, entre a gente,
Postos em nós os olhos, meneando
Três vezes a cabeça, descontente,
A voz pesada um pouco alevantando,
Que nós no mar ouvimos claramente,
C'um saber só de experiências feito,
Tais palavras tirou do experto peito:Ó glória de mandar! Ó vã cobiça
Desta vaidade, a quem chamamos Fama!O glory of commanding! O vain thirst
Of that same empty nothing we call fame!

Age, Relation ships, Science, Time

“I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies—in great towns and great crowds. It is a plant that takes times and space and air; and London society is a huge "squash," as we elegantly call it—an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob.”

Henry James book The Awkward Age

Said by Vanderbank in Book I, ch. II.
The Awkward Age (1899)

Friendship, Time

“I’m very introverted, I would prefer solitude to being in the middle of a crowded place. But the draw to service is definitely a draw to community.”

Ivan Camilleri (1969) bishop of the roman-catholic church

The time is now for Camilleri https://www.catholicregister.org/item/32627-the-time-is-now-for-camilleri (January 21, 2021)

Communication, Solitude, Drawing

“One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today’s factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy.”

Peter Singer book The Most Good You Can Do

Source: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015), Chapter 15: Preventing Human Extinction (p. 177)

Chance, Animals

“Surrounded by hordes of people, busy with all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world - such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too risky to be himself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, part of the crowd.”

Sören Kierkegaard book The Sickness unto Death

Source: The Sickness unto Death

“All the experience I had in television, radio, theater, stage and films gave me confidence in front of crowds. Because of that, I can talk to an audience of a thousand people without a moment's nervousness, and talk without a script for hours.”

Sara Shane (1928–2022) American actress

Interview with Elaine Hollingsworth https://web.archive.org/web/20071003020618/http://www.tarzan.cc/int-sarashane.html (July 9, 2007)

People, Confidence, Self-confidence

“Learn to unite with those who fight for social causes, don't be a swallow alone in the crowd!”

Valter Bitencourt Júnior (1994) Brazilian poet and writer

Learning, Fight

“The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Success, Success

“Be private and stay low-key, remember there is no need to tell the crowds more than they need to know. Because they can't mess with what they don't know.”

Ayuel Monykuch (1997) South Sudanese Entrepreneur

“I've danced my whole life and I really just enjoy dancing and performing, which is probably why I'm an actress. I love performing and getting a reaction from the crowd and giving people energy.”

Jennifer Tisdale (1981) American actress

Source: TEEN TALKS TO: Jennifer and Ashley Tisdale https://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/movies-tv/a11654/jennifer-tisdale-interview/ (January 1, 2008)

Love, Life, People, Dance

“Ask yourself what you really want from life.
Don't follow that crowd.”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"Thursday" (song, 2013), with the Pet Shop Boys Official video on YouTube)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tg_zvDg3Xo("Thursday", (+ A lyrics version of "Thursday" on YouTube)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toAe4VusW2E Non-album singles, As featured artist

Life

“We crowd ourselves at work, then claim that there are too many competitions in the world.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

World

“Books just don’t register with this crowd. They think I lack common sense; I think they lack a part of their souls.”

Maureen Corrigan (1955) American journalist and writer

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading (2005)
Source: Interlude, “Books, What a Jolly Company They Are” (p. 57)

Books, Soul, Thinking, Sense

“Technology magnifies the ability of one person to have a big impact on other people. If that doesn't scare you, then the next time you see professional wrestling on television, look at the crowd shots and ask yourself if you'd like those people to have a bigger impact on your life.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Source: Books, The Dilbert Future (1997)

Life, People, Time, Personality

“We said no to communism. We said no to apartheid. We said no to injustice. We said no to oppression. And we said yes to freedom, yes to democracy. Now I ask you: What do we say to war? CROWD: No!”

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

February 15, 2003 speaking before a massive rally in New York to oppose the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq Source: As quoted in Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) on Apartheid, War, Palestine, Guantánamo, Climate Crisis & More https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/27/life_and_legacy_archbishop_desmond_tutu, Democracy Now!, December 27, 2021

War, Democracy, Communication, Freedom