Quotes about mass
page 13

“By that time it was already clear that the next prime minster was going to be Golda Meir, a woman whom I frankly detested – a mutual sentiment, I might add. I knew her as an opinionated, obstinate person, primitive in her outlook, rigid in her attitudes, with a genius for reaching and exploiting the deepest fears and prejudices of the Jewish masses. I was certain that with her as prime minister, all peace efforts would come to a total standstill.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

My Friend, the Enemy (1986) – page 80

Fear, Peace, Effort, Time

“In Mongolia has been discovered a mass grave containing the remains of thousands of Buddhist monks liquidated by a former communist regime. An 83-old man, once head of an extermination squad, admitted that he personally put 15,724 to death. 1197-at-Nalanda was repeated not by invading Muslim armies but by local communist revolutionaries and social transformers.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Quoted from the preface by Ram Swarup in Gurbachan, S. T. S., & Swarup, R. (1991). Muslim League attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947.

Death, Personality

“Is it not altogether absurd that, under actual circumstances, the average man does not feel spontaneously, and without being preached at, an ardent enthusiasm for those sciences and the related ones of biology?… Every day furnishes a new invention which this average man utilises. Every day produces a new anesthetic or vaccine from which this average man benefits. … How is it, nevertheless, that there is no sign of the masses imposing on themselves any sacrifice of money or attention in order to endow science more worthily? Far from this being the case, the post-war period has converted the man of science into a new social pariah.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Money, War, Feeling, Science

“The demand for equality and identity arises precisely in order to avoid that fear, that feeling of inferiority. Nobody is better, nobody is superior, nobody feels challenged, everybody is "safe." Furthermore, if identity, if sameness has been achieved, then the other person's actions and reactions can be forecast. With no (disagreeable) surprises, a warm herd feeling of brotherhood emerges. These sentiments -- this rejection of quality (which ineluctably differs from person to person) -- explain much concerning the spirit of the mass movements of the last two hundred years. Simone Weil has told us that the "I" comes from the flesh, but "we" comes from the devil.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 5

Fear, Feeling, Personality

“If time is an illusion, then all movement and change are also illusions. So the only thing that gives us the illusion of movement and change and events and time is the fact that our consciousness is moving through this mass along the time axis. If you imagine it as a strip of celluloid, each of those individual cells is motionless. If they each represent a moment, they’re unchanging. They’re not going anywhere, but as the projector beam of our consciousness passes across them, it provides the illusion of movement, and narrative and cause and effect and circumstances.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

The Believer interview (2013)

Imagination, Change, Time

“And as the mouthpiece
Of every single citizen without peace
Direction and leadership
I'ma spit it 'til your ears can't believe this shit
We got weapons of mass destruction, and we is it”

Danny! (1983) American rapper

"Talk To You (remix)"
Albums, The College Kicked-Out (2004)

“In the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single group in every developed country, and unionized industrial workers in mass-production industry (which was then dominant everywhere) had attained upper-middle-class income levels. They had extensive job security, pensions, long paid vacations, and comprehensive unemployment insurance or "lifetime employment." Above all, they had achieved political power… Thirty-five years later, in 1990, industrial workers and their unions were in retreat. They had become marginal in numbers. Whereas industrial workers who make or move things had accounted for two fifths of the American work force in the 1950s, they accounted for less than one fifth in the early 1990s--that is, for no more than they had accounted for in 1900, when their meteoric rise began… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

About the rise and fall of the blue-collar worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

Country

“Everywhere the masses are on the move, everywhere there is rebellion against authority, the negation of all religion, the generation of hatred and envy against those with wealth. We are probably facing major catastrophes.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary c. 1886, quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his court : Wilhelm II and the government of Germany

Religion, Envy, Wealth

“The left should carve out a new long-term narrative about British foreign policy: one that puts human rights and the protection of civilians centre stage again. And one that reasserts our commitment to the responsibility to protect those most at risk of mass atrocity crimes. This isn’t really about being pro or anti-military intervention. Rather it’s a call to redefine the principles that will guide the decisions we take, as well as a commitment to then honour them.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

A new progressive internationalism (17 June 2016)

Decision

“[R]aces love to be judged in two ways—by the great men they produce, and by the average merit of the mass of the race.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

1860s, Toussaint L'Ouverture (1861)

Love, Men, Way

“Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

St. 1
"Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni" (1802)

Home

“What will happen once the authentic mass man takes over, we do not know yet, although it may be a fair guess that he will have more in common with the meticulous, calculated correctness of Himmler than with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stubborn dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Part 3, Ch. 10, § 2.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

“This pioneer work, written for both the professional economist and the businessman, has become a classic in its field. It is a detailed examination of the structure of the large business corporation in relation to its actual economic functioning. Because Gordon views the corporation not as an external institution but as organized human activity, his emphasis is on the personal and volitional elements in leadership, or how businessmen actually shape their practices. His analysis is based on a formidable mass of case material and statistical data”

Robert Aaron Gordon (1908–1978) American economist

Abstract
Business Leadership in the Large Corporation (1945)

Business, Personality

“The parity pushers fail to see the subtle grays of complexity in all of its tortured and messy manifestations. With swords held high, they ride forth and exploit every possible weapon in the political arsenal. Equality is to be imposed, unevenness and nonlinearity banished to the nether world. Science is politicalized for mass consumption, and natural laws are summarily supplanted by ideological 'correctness.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 301

World, Law, Nature, Science

“The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Wisdom, People, Hope, Learning

“As technology advances the entire concept of authority in industry may have to change. In process firms the relationships between superior and subordinate was much more like that between a travel agent and his clients than that between a foreman and operators in mass production. The process foreman's job was to arrange things within limits, set by the plant, which both he and the operators accepted.”

Joan Woodward (1916–1971) British sociologist

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 30

Travel, Change

“Clinton, Kennedy, they all carried out mass murder, but they didn't think that that was what they were doing - nor does Bush. You know, they were defending justice and democracy from greater evils. And in fact I think you'd find it hard to discover a mass murderer in history who didn't think that.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2004, Interview by Wallace Shawn, 2004

Justice, Democracy, History, Thinking

“Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business.”

Noam Chomsky book Deterring Democracy

Deterring Democracy (1992), p. 357 http://books.google.com/books?id=uZui06DXqmcC&pg=PA357. Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

Business

“It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

As quoted in Living in Grace : The Shift to Spiritual Perception (2002) by Beca Lewis, p. 158

“The wastage from economic conflict is so titanic under individualism that even if gross productivity should be reduced somewhat under socialization of the basic industries, the mass of people would nevertheless be better off because of the diminished conflict and resultant devastation.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

People

“I have told you that emotions also possess an electrical reality. Thoughts formed and sent out within the impulse range of emotion often succeed because of the peculiar nature of emotional electrical impulses themselves. They have a particularly strong electrical mass.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 136, Page 280
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 3

Nature, Reality, Strong

“The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so… …Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 3 April 1972; p. 86
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

Painting

“The great mass of people are interested in only three things—food, clothing, and shelter. A politician in a district like mine sees to it that his people get these things.”

Martin Lomasney (1859–1933) American politician

[O'Connor, Thomas H., The Boston Irish: A Political History, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1995, 9781555532208, 122, https://books.google.com/?id=ld8YAQAAMAAJ]

People, Food, Clothes

“I find it remarkable that some groups say “We don’t support ISIL” as if that alone proves their anti-extremist credentials. And let’s be clear Al-Qaeda don’t support ISIL. So we can’t let the bar sink to that level. Condemning a mass-murdering, child-raping organisation cannot be enough to prove you’re challenging the extremists.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Support

“As one might expect, the gunman’s fondness for Confederate heritage has become a focus of discussion. We’ve had people calling for the banning of Confederate flags as symbols of hate while certain defenders of Confederate heritage, sometimes after offering perfunctory statements of regret, rush to disassociate their cause from this mass murder or to offer other explanations for the gunman’s behavior. That’s to be expected, and it is to be regretted. We’ve had far too much discussion of the Confederate flag, both by people who hate it and people who love it, that trivialize the whole matter by turning it into a screaming match between extremes. Thoughtful commentary flounders in such environments, precisely because both sides will assail it. It's Sunday. If you haven’t already done so, think about the victims and their families and friends. Pray for those who have suffered. And think before you respond.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2010s, Charleston: White Supremacy, Black Lives, and Red Blood (June 2015)

Love, Hate, People, Family

“Through every legitimate educational procedure the truth must be driven home to the masses of people that the race of armaments is not a means of defense but a race to mutual suicide.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

People, Truth, Education, Home

“The masses once dined on opera and Shakespeare.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

State of the Art (2000)

“It is obvious that a whiteguard insurrection is being prepared in Nizhni. You must strain every effort, appoint three men will) dictatorial powers (yourself, Markin and one other), organise immediately mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Statement (9 August 1918) Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 349 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/09gff.htm 1910s

Men, Effort

“Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalized capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known. It has killed far more people than Adolf Hitler. It has killed far more people than George Bush. The economic system which these people support, which leaves most of the people in the world hungry, and without clean water to drink. So we're going to put them on trial, the leaders, when they come. They think they're coming for a holiday in a beautiful country called Scotland; in fact, they're coming to their trial.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Interview on Abu Dhabi TV http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP91805, June 1, 2005

War, People, World, Beauty

“Like it or not, giant, vertically integrated corporate enterprises were the most efficient means of organizing the production and distribution of mass produced goods and services. Bringing together supply chains, production processes, and distribution channels in vertically integrated companies under centralized management dramatically reduced transaction costs, increased efficiencies and productivity, lowered the marginal cost of production and distribution, and, for the most part, lowered the price of goods and services to consumers, allowing the economy to flourish. While those at the top of the corporate pyramid disproportionately benefited from the increasing returns on investment, it’s only fair to acknowledge that the lives of millions of consumers also improved appreciably in industrialized nations.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Parting

“To say that the activity of science and art helps humanity's progress, if by that activity we mean the activity which now calls itself by those names, is as though one said that the clumsy, obstructive splashing of oars in a boat moving down stream assists the boat's progress. It only hinders it… The proof of this is seen in the confession made by men of science that the achievements of the arts and sciences are inaccessible to the labouring masses on account of the unequal distribution of wealth.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

Men, Art, Science, Help

“Because information trumps mass, all commerce migrates to the network economy.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“I have never read the Koran and at this point I most likely never shall. It looks really boring. I can’t offer an informed opinion about Islam, any more than 99.9 percent of other Americans can. I certainly don’t wish any harm to Muslims in general. Jolly good luck to them all. Hate? Not here. But it is surely obvious that if you let masses of Muslims settle in your non-Muslim country, you’ve gotten yourself some frictions and problems you didn’t have before. Why bring such troubles on yourself?”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

After the Atrocity In Nice http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/after-the-atrocity-in-nice/, The Unz Review, July 17, 2016.

Hate, Problem, Reading, Country

“I became a member of the Party in January, 1933, in the heat of battle. At the time, I was serving as defense attorney for Angelo Herndon in Atlanta, Georgia, where Herndon, an eighteen-year-old Negro youth, had been framed on a charge of inciting to insurrection…. Of what was Herndon "guilty"? He had led a demonstration of unemployed Negro and white workers to City Hall, had been found with a couple of Communist pamphlets in his possession, and possessed a firm and inspiringly defiant advocacy of the freedom of Negroes and of the liberation of the white masses from exploitation. The "dangerous" policy he then espoused as a Communist, was the unity of the Negroes in the South with the impoverished white workers and poor farmers.”

Benjamin J. Davis Jr. (1903–1964) American politician

"Why I am a Communist" (1947)

Youth, Freedom, Time

“Dogma is intended for, and suited to, the great mass of the human race; and as such it can contain merely allegorical truth that it nevertheless has to pass off as truth sensu proprio [in the proper sense].”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Als auf die große Masse des Menschengeschlechts berechnet und derselben angemessen, kann bloß allegorische Wahrheit enthalten, welche sie jedoch als sensu proprio wahr geltend zu machen hat.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 160, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 147
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Truth, Sense

“I delighted his fussy little soul, because by adding what I remembered of Navy protocol to what he was able to teach me of Army routine, we came up with as snarled a mass of red tape as any field-grade officer in the whole history of all armed forces had been able to accumulate. Oh, I tell you, nobody sneezed in New York without a report being made out in triplicate, with eight endorsements.
Of course there wasn’t anybody to send them to, but that didn’t stop the Major. He said with determination: “Nobody’s ever going to chew me out for noncompliance with regulations—even if I have to invent the regulations myself!””

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

The Knights of Arthur (p. 394)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

Soul, History

“If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

A Footnote To Rally The Academic, p. 179.
In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981

World, Support, Change

“In both the solutions A and B the curvature is positive, in both three-dimensional space is finite: the universe has a definite size, we can speak of its radius, and, in the case A, of its total mass. In the case A… the density is proportional to the curvature… Thus, if we wish to have a finite density in a static universe, we must have a finite positive curvature.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Universe

“The conversion of mass to energy and light is the prerogative of every star.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 357.

Star, Light

“Christ's finished sacrifice was sufficient. By participating in the mass, Roman Catholics are calling Him a liar! It's an abomination in the eyes of God.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Are Roman Catholics Christians? http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0071/0071_01.asp" (1985)

God, Christ

“Where and when have riots and anarchy been provoked by wise measures? If the government had acted wisely, and if their measures had met the needs of the poor peasants, would there have been unrest among the peasant masses?”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Report on Land (8 November 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/25-26/26d.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26. 1910s

“For some the wind can fleshly blow,
for some the sunlight fade at ease,
but we, made partners in our dread,
hear but the grating of the keys,
and heavy-booted soldiers' tread.
As if for early mass, we rose
and each day walked the wilderness,
trudging through silent street and square,
to congregate, less live than dead.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Dedication

Dead

“It is an extraordinary thing that this civilization, which wears out our nerves and exacts an almost painful effort from us in all our doings, should be at great pains to spare the mass of people that intellectual effort which is the only measure of true culture.”

Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) French writer

Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p.

Pain, People, Effort

“With the invention of printing, mass standardized culture had become possible.
With the inventions of photography and then cinema, the standardization of popular culture began to progress geometrically and its rate of change slowed down.
In addition, the complete documentation of daily life made possible by these technological advances presented the mass of humanity, for the first time in history, with a mirror in which to regard itself. Less and less had it been able to look away, as its own image became more detailed and perfect, especially with the burden of information that became available at the end of the twentieth century.
What this meant, in practical terms, was that retro was the only fashion.”

Kage Baker book The Life of the World to Come

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 6, “Alec and His Friends” (p. 105)

Life, History, Fashion, Change

“I never became a believer. I had a natural predisposition toward skepticism. If you can’t measure it, it isn’t there. That included not only Old Whiskers and His Only Begotten Son, but all the other mystic baggage that people liked to carry around in those tense credulous years: the flying saucers, Zen Buddhism, the Atlantis cult, Hare Krishna, macrobiotics, telepathy and other species of extrasensory perception, theosophy, entropy-worship, astrology, and such. I was willing to accept neutrinos, quasars, the theory of continental drift, and the various species of quarks, because I respected the evidence for their existence; I couldn’t buy the other stuff, the irrational stuff, the assorted opiates of the masses, When the Moon is in the seventh house, etc., etc.—sorry, no.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, Thomas the Proclaimer (1972), Chapter 3, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” (p. 76)

People, Nature, Housing, Flying

“But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply, so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface, overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship. All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted partly in groups, partly en masse at the close—a distinction which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy, is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy; "friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner, the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials; even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship," which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 2, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
On Roman Friendship in the last ages of the Republic.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life, Death, Friendship, War

“to try also, inasmuch as possible, to go beyond easel painting, which in my opinion has a narrow goal, and to bring myself closer, through painting, to the human masses I have never stopped thinking about.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

1915 - 1940
Source: 'Je rêve d'un grand atelier', Miro 1938; as quoted in Calder Miró, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 65

Thinking, Painting

“Education is a monstrosity when it is unequal, when it is the exclusive patrimony of one class of the society; because education then becomes the controlling hand of this class, a mass of mechanisms, a provision of weapons of all kinds, by which the ruling class combats the other class, which is disarmed.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

L'éducation est une monstruosité lorsqu'elle est inégale, lorsqu'elle est le patrimoine exclusif d'une portion de l'association; puisqu'alors elle devient la main de cette portion, un amas de machines, une provisions d'armes de toutes sortes, à l'aide desquelles cette première portion combat l'autre qui est désarmé.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 49, 27082 2892-7, Manifeste des Plébéien]
On education

Education

“I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners — black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old — indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for caste, for religion or whatever.
That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith, it is just indiscriminate attempt at mass murder — and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Response to London bombings (7 July 2005)

Age, World, Faith, Religion

“At one time, I was an actor in the conduct of foreign policy. I became convinced that I was accomplishing nothing in that capacity, that the problems were deeper, that the answer lay in a direct approach to the public and in an effort to explain to the public what it was really about. Today, even that seems futile. Myths and errors are being established in the public mind more rapidly than they can be broken down. The mass media are too much for us. There is nothing that can be done about it. To correct this, you would have to educate the educators. I must say that I have lost all confidence in the freedom of the mass media. The fact of the matter is that in this country McCarthyism has already won, in the sense of making impossible the conduct of an intelligent foreign policy.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

April 17, 1951
The Kennan Diaries

Education, Error, Confidence, Intelligence

“The Federal courts... surrendered to racist mob psychology as cravenly as any law officer ever did in the Reconstruction South under pressure from a lynch mob. Suddenly, mass bigotry was more dominant in the so called halls of justice in 1995 than it had been in 1955.”

Carl Rowan (1925–2000) American journalist

Quoington Star article entitled "Has President Nixon Gone Crazy?", "The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-up Call" (1996)

Justice, Law

“A corporate raid on a country is not foreign investment. It's just a corporate raid. A corporate raid doesn't expand our wealth, our employment, our exports, is not advantageous to most economies and most economies understand that. In New Zealand we did not. Everything that came from overseas was regarded as foreign investment, when, in fact, it was often a downsizing of the operation, a break-up of the operation and a mass of sackings.”

Winston Peters (1945) New Zealand politician

Interview with the 7:30 Report, ABC TV, Australia.

Understanding, Country, Wealth

“Earth grates on my nerves. It gives me a big pain these days. That’s why I live out here. Earth is overcrowded, bureaucratic, unhealthy, and suffering from too many mass-psychoses to bother classifying.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 3 (p. 61)

Pain, Suffering

“Yesterday I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace. We remained in it about three hours, and I must say I was more struck with it on this occasion than at my first visit. It is a wonderful place – vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there, from the great compartments filled with railway engines and boilers, with mill machinery in full work, with splendid carriages of all kinds, with harness of every description, to the glass-covered and velvet-spread stands loaded with the most gorgeous work of the goldsmith and silversmith, and the carefully guarded caskets full of real diamonds and pearls worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as Eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it this, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect. The multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence. Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from the distance.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on attending The Great Exhibition of 1851. The Brontes' Life and Letters, (by Clement King Shorter) (1907)

People, Soul, Time, Sea

“The power and force of stone reside in its mass, its weight, and its density.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 19.

“Though brutal and bombastic, and dripping with venom against the Czech state and especially against the Czech President, the Fuehrer's speech, made to a delirious mass of Nazi fanatics gathered in the huge stadium on the last night of the party rally, was not a declaration of war. He reserved his decision -- publicly at least, for, as we know from the captured German documents, he had already set October 1 for the attack across the Czech frontier. He simply demanded that the Czech government give "justice" to the Sudeten Germans. If it didn't, Germany would have to see to it that it did.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

War, Justice, Decision, Night

“Of course, we're there because of weapons of mass destruction that do not exist.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, WAR

“Most memorable was the day before the mass, at confession.”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

“The educator aims at a slow process of development; the propagandist, at quick results. The educator tries to tell people how to think; the propagandist, what to think. The educator strives to develop individual responsibility; the propagandist, mass effects. The educator wants thinking; the propagandist, action. The educator fails unless he achieves an open mind; the propagandist, unless he achieves a closed mind.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929), p. 145

People, Education, Thinking

“It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself…This general principle, that men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual psychology…Human desires are the steam which makes the soial machine work. Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that cast, loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society.”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Page 75 as quoted in Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism edited by Mark P. Leone, Jocelyn E. Knauf, p.40
Propaganda (1928)

Men, School, Motivation, Understanding

“I am persuaded there is no triumph equal to one achieved on the stage—it comes so immediate and so home : you have before you the mass of human beings whose sympathies are at your will; you witness the emotions which you raise, you see the tears which you command : the poet has erected the statue, but it is for you to give it life—the words must find their music on your lips—the generous sentiment, the exalted hope, the touches of deep feeling, ask their expression from you : surely such influence is among the triumphs of the mind, ay and a great and noble triumph.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life, Hope, Music, Feeling

“In a time of sickness with the pleurisy, a little upward of two years and a half ago, I was brought so near the gates of death that I forgot my name. Being then desirous to know who I was, I saw a mass of matter of a dull, gloomy color, between the south and the east; and was informed that this mass was human beings in as great misery as they could be and live; and that I was mixed in with them, and that henceforth I might not consider myself as a distinct or separate being. In this state I remained several hours. I then heard a soft, melodious voice, more pure and harmonious than any I had heard with my ears before; I believed it was the voice of an angel, who spake to the other angels. The words were: “John Woolman is dead.””

John Woolman (1720–1772) American Quaker preacher

I soon remembered that I once was John Woolman, and being assured that I was alive in the body, I greatly wondered what that heavenly voice could mean. Source: The Journal of John Woolman (1774), p. 164 ( online http://books.google.nl/books?id=qPspAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA164)

Death, Angels, Color, Time

“The man of genius whether as artist or thinker requires a mass of accidental variations to select from and a rigidly selective process of attention.”

Boris Sidis (1867–1923) American psychiatrist

Source: The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology (1914), p. 98

“A seeker after Truth cannot afford to indulge in generalisation. Darwin for the greater part of his book Origin of the Species [sic] has simply massed fact upon fact without any theorising, and only towards the end has formulated his conclusion which, because of the sheer weight of testimony behind it, becomes almost irresistible. Yes I have criticised even Darwin's generalisation as being unwarranted. Science tells us that a proposition may hold good in nine hundred ninety-nine cases and yet fail in the thousandth case and thus be rendered untenable as a universal statement.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

"Generalisation", from Harijan (6 July 1940). Quoted in Teachings of Mahatma Gandhi (1945), edited by Jag Parvesh Chander, Indian Printing Works, pages 243-244 http://archive.org/stream/teachingsofmahat029222mbp#page/n247. 1940s

Truth, Books, Universe, Science

“Money is miraculous. What miraculous facilities has it yielded, will it yield us; but also what never-imagined confusions, obscurations has it brought in; down almost to total extinction of the moral-sense in large masses of mankind!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Money, Imagination, Sense

“Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. xli

Men, Business

“It is quite easy to include a weight for empty space in the equations of gravity. Einstein did so in 1917, introducing what came to be known as the cosmological constant into his equations. His motivation was to construct a static model of the universe. To achieve this, he had to introduce a negative mass density for empty space, which just canceled the average positive density due to matter. With zero total density, gravitational forces can be in static equilibrium. Hubble's subsequent discovery of the expansion of the universe, of course, made Einstein's static model universe obsolete. …The fact is that to this day we do not understand in a deep way why the vacuum doesn't weigh, or (to say the same thing in another way) why the cosmological constant vanishes, or (to say it in yet another way) why Einstein's greatest blunder was a mistake.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Way, Motivation, Understanding, Universe

“In our modern world, mass hunger, economic stagnation, environmental catastrophe, political instability, and terrorism cannot be quarantined within national borders.”

Willy Brandt (1913–1992) German social-democratic politician; Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

Attributed in "World Government—What Are the Obstacles?", Awake! magazine article, 1984, 12/22.

Hunger, World

“I think it will be felt by the community as a whole as if they had lost a relative. Certainly those who have been associated with him closely for years will feel a deep sense of personal bereavement. I have never met a great public figure since I have been in politics who so completely won the attachment and affection of the men who came into contact with him. He was not merely admired and respected; he was absolutely loved by us all. I really cannot trust myself to say more. The masses of the people of this country, especially the more unfortunate of them, have lost the best friend they ever had in the high places of the land. His sympathy in all suffering was real, deep, and unaffected. He was truly a great man—a great head and a great heart. He was absolutely the bravest man I ever met in politics. He was entirely free from fear. He was a man of supreme courage. Ireland has certainly lost one of her truest friends, and what is true of Ireland is true of every section of the community of this Empire which has a fight to maintain against powerful foes.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

David Lloyd George upon Campbell-Bannerman's death, quoted in The Times (23 April 1908), p. 5.
About

Love, Men, People, Fear

“The era of the masses, which follows the age of the republics, excites the feelings and dazzles the eyes. But even though the vision of this era denotes genuine freedom of the masses and their happy emancipation from the bonds of external authoritarian structures, it warns also of the dangers of a period of chaos and demagoguery, and the threat of a return to the authority of the individual, the sect and party, instead of the authority of the people. Theoretically, this is genuine democracy but, realistically, the strong always rules. That is, the stronger party in the society is the one that rules.”

Muammar Gaddafi book The Green Book

The Green Book (1975)
The Green Book (1975)

Happiness, People, Age, Feeling

“I rarely saw them as individuals. It was always a huge mass…they were naked, packed together, running, being driven with whips.”

Franz Stangl (1908–1971) Austrian-born SS officer, commandant at first Sobibór extermination camp and then Treblinka extermination c…

When asked how he felt about the execution of children. Quoted in "The Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections on Germany" - Page 125 - by Gitta Sereny - History - 2001.

“If… part of the related mind-masses hang together among themselves, then these are not only immediately excited but also mediately and consequently in proportion more powerfully than the rest.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Parting

“The masses on the contrary, have just reached the point where the ancestors of today's scientists were standing two generations back. They are convinced that the scientific picture of an arbitrary abstraction from reality is a picture of reality as a whole and that therefore the world is without meaning or value. But nobody likes living in such a world. To satisfy their hunger for meaning and value, they turn to such doctrines as nationalism, fascism and revolutionary communism. Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Hunger, World, Communication, Reality

“[The] swarming, grunting masses of jackals…”

Conrad Black (1944) Canadian-born newspaper publisher

On investigative journalists:
"The world according to Conrad Black", 2007

“Presidents may go to the seashore or to the mountains. Cabinet officers may go about the country explaining how fortunate the country is in having such an administration, but the machinery at Washington continues to operate under the army of faithful non-commissioned officers, and the great mass of governmental business is uninterrupted.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (Columbia University Press, 1916)

Faith, Mountain, Business, Country

“That any should suffer forever, lingering on in hopeless despair, and rolling amidst infinite torments without the possibility of alleviation and without end; that since God can save men and will save a part, he has not proposed to save all — these are real, not imaginary, difficulties… My whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me why sin came into the world; why the earth is strewn with the dying and the dead; and why man must suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind… I confess, when I look on a world of sinners and sufferers — upon death-beds and grave-yards — upon the world of woe filled with hosts to suffer for ever: when I see my friends, my family, my people, my fellow citizens when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger — and when I see the great mass of them wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he does not do so, I am stuck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Practical Sermons Designed for Vacant Congregations and Families (1841), Sermon VIII : God Is Worthy of Confidence, p. 123.

Death, Men, God, People

“The top of modern American society is increasingly unified and often seems wilfully co-ordinated: at the top there has emerged an elite of power. The middle levels are a drifting set of stalemated balancing forces: the middle does not link the bottom with the top. The bottom of this society is fragmented, and even as a passive fact, increasingly powerless:at the bottom there is emerging a mass society.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

The Power Elite (1956)

“But what would become of mass production and its system of financial expansion if technical perfection, durability, social efficiency, and human satisfaction were the guiding aims. The very conditions for current financial success — constantly expanding production and replacement — works against these ends. To ensure the rapid absorption of its immense productivity, megatechnics resorts to a score of different devices: consumer credit, installment buying, multiple packaging, non-functional designs, meretricious novelties, shoddy materials, defective workmanship, built-in fragility, or forced obsolescence through frequent arbitrary changes of fashion. Without constant enticement and inveiglement by advertising, production would slow down and level off to normal replacement demand. Otherwise many products could reach a plateau of efficient design which would call for only minimal changes from year to year.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Megatechnic Costs and Benefits
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

Fashion, Change, Success, Perfection

“Out of the total number of the persons designated for the execution, fifteen men were led in each case to the brink of the mass grave where they had to kneel down, their faces turned towards the grave. When the men were ready for the execution one of my leaders who was in charge of this execution squad gave the order to shoot. Since they were kneeling on the brink of the mass grave, the victims fell, as a rule, at once into the mass grave.”

Paul Blobel (1894–1951) German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 157 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

Men, Personality

“We must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are already here. They should not be given an automatic path to citizenship; that is amnesty. I oppose amnesty. There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic pass to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program of mass deportation. And I look forward to working with Congress to find that middle ground.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2004, Signing of Secure Fence Act of 2006

Reality

“I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced, and such has been its progress in the minds of the many, that this truth gradually gains ground. This government has for its object public strength and individual security. It is said with us to be unattainable. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good?”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, v. 1, p. 299. (June 19, 1787)
Debates of the Federal Convention (1787)

God, People, Truth, World

“The needs of business, and the extensive market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced.
With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Business, Waiting, Parting

“The seething racial resentment in the Third World against the West — decades after independence and trillions in foreign aid — should cause second thoughts about opening our borders to mass immigration from that world. Not everyone coming here brings in his heart the passionate attachment to America we attribute to the peoples of Ellis Island.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2010s, State of Emergency (2006)

People, World, Passion, Heart

“In just the measure that education aims to develop the individual with independence of judgment rather than to indoctrinate him with tradition and custom and official dogma, to that degree it separates him from the mass and is successful insofar as it emancipates his mind from the tyranny of herd opinion.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), p. 17

Education, Success

“I feel a fatigue of the tongue seeking to utter impossible things until it twists itself into a knot and chokes me. I feel a fatigue at this mass of nerves seeking to uphold a world that is falling apart. I feel a fatigue at feeling, at the fervor of my dreams, the fever of my thought, the intensity of my hallucinations. A fatigue at the sufferings of others and my own. I feel my own blood thundering inside of me, I feel the horror of falling into abysms. But you and I would always fall together and I would not be afraid. We would fall into abysms, but you would carry your phosphorescences to the very bottom of the abysms. We could fall together and ascend together, far into space. I was always exhausted by my dreams, not because of the dreams, but because of the fear of not being able to return. I do not need to return. I will find you everywhere. You alone can go wherever I go, into the same mysterious regions. You too know the language of the nerves. You will always know what I am saying even if I do not.”

Anaïs Nin book Under a Glass Bell

"Je suis le plus malade des Surrealistes"
Under a Glass Bell (1944)

World, Fear, Dreams, Feeling

“Within the world of total work, the "festival" is either "a break from work" (and thus only there for the sake of work), or it is a more intensive celebration of the principles of work itself (as in the "Labor Days," and thus belongs, again, to the working world). There will naturally be "games" — like the Roman circences — but who would dignify the amusements for the masses with the name of "festival"?”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 53

World, Game, Nature

“Before people crow about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, I suggest they wait a bit.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister's monthly press conference, April 2003 http://web.archive.org/20030511155256/www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page3535.asp, Prime Minister's website. 28 April 2003. 2000s

People, Waiting

“The highest part of the human soul, which is called the intelligence and which is not the act of any body and does not need for its proper operation a corporeal instrument—this intelligence, if it were not obscured and weighed down by the mass of the body, would itself have complete knowledge from the irradiation received from the superior light without the help of sense, just as it will have when the soul is drawn forth from the body, and as perhaps those people have who are free from the love and the imaginings of corporeal things.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)

Love, People, Soul, Imagination

“Let us suppose that an explosion occurs on Mars, which is observed by an astronomer on earth, who records the instant when he sees the flash. If light travelled instantaneously with an infinite velocity, this instant would coincide with the time… recorded by the… observer on Mars. In this way a meaning could be attached automatically to absolute time and the simultaneity of events at different places; indeed, the classical theory is now regarded as the limiting form of Einstein's theory when the velocity of light becomes infinite. But as there is a mass of experimental evidence supporting the view that light takes a finite time to travel… the terrestrial observer must correct the time recorded on his watch. This correction… will depend on assumptions concerning the velocity of light and the measurement of distance. Thus the concept of a world-wide simultaneity ceases to be a primitive idea.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

p, 125
The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

World, Way, Travel, Idea

“Since most of the mass immigration now convulsing Europe is composed of Muslims, it is therefore hardly surprising that anti-immigrant feeling is largely anti-Muslim feeling. The sheer weight of numbers plus the refusal to assimilate to western values makes this an unprecedented crisis for western liberalism. The crisis is forcing it to confront the fundamental questions of what constitutes a country, national identity and the very nature of a liberal society.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

"How the West was lost" http://www.melaniephillips.com/how-the-west-was-lost (May 11, 2002)

Feeling, Question, Nature, Country

“As far as France is concerned, we are ready to envisage everything that can be done under UNSCR 1441. […] But I repeat that every possibility offered by the present resolution must be explored, that there are a lot of them and they still leave us with a lot of leeway when it comes to ways of achieving the objective of eliminating any weapons of mass destruction which may exist in Iraq. I'd like nevertheless to note that, as things stand at the moment, I have, to my knowledge, no indisputable proof in this sphere.”

Jacques Chirac (1932–2019) 22nd President of France

Source: http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/actu/bulletin.gb.asp?liste=20030211.gb.html Statement made during a joint press conference, Paris, February 10 2003 Diplomacy with Iraq 2000s

Way, Knowledge

“Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Time, Dependency

“We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2012, Roots of mass murder: Getting serious about stopping the psychotic (2012)

Men, Pain, Youth, Game

“Every one of the numberless religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own fashion; and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant masses, and calls them "revelation." As the dogmas of every religion and sect often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they?”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter II

Religion, Imagination, Fashion

“{Music symbolizes the loss of faith, of common belief. ] The small, intimate church is closed, the organs are dead, it is sadder than before. Only those whom fate designs for the eternal mass of infinite love remain. They compose only a very small chapel of clarity in space and time.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

45
Mea culpa; suivi de la vie et l'oeuvre de Semmelweis (1937)

Love, Fate, Faith, Music

“There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators... Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

Men, World, Way, Literature

“The only assurance that I can now give of the future is reference to the past. The course which I have taken in the past in connection with this rebellion must be regarded as a guaranty of the future. My past public life, which has been long and laborious, has been founded, as I in good conscience believe, upon a great principle of right, which lies at the basis of all things. The best energies of my life have been spent in endeavoring to establish and perpetuate the principles of free government, and I believe that the Government in passing through its present perils will settle down upon principles consonant with popular rights more permanent and enduring than heretofore. I must be permitted to say, if I understand the feelings of my own heart, that I have long labored to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the great mass of the American people. Toil and an honest advocacy of the great principles of free government have been my lot. Duties have been mine; consequences are God's. This has been the foundation of my political creed, and I feel that in the end the Government will triumph and that these great principles will be permanently established.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Quote, First Presidential address (1865)

Life, God, People, Feeling

“I think that, uh, you know, I'm really happy that the message, or at least some of the message of The Secret is reaching mass consciousness in a way that people realize that they can begin to, uh, positively affect their lives. That's why when I was on the show and said "I've lived this way my whole life", and people who watched our show for years know that I've been talking about how you take responsibility for your life and the choices that you make. Empower your life. And so, when I say that, you know, um, that's how I live my life, the message of The Secret, that's what I mean. I also believe, that, uh, medical healing or healing comes in lots of forms. You know that adage about the guy being lost and God sent him a boat and God sent him — then he gets to heaven and says "Why didn't you help me?" And God's, "I sent you the boat, fool!"”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

So, that's the way I look at medical healing. To Kim Tinkham, who wrote Oprah that she watched her show about The Secret, was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, and decided to heal herself instead of a mastectomy and chemotherapy that four doctors told her she urgently needed, on The Oprah Winfrey Show (March 2007) · YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uf-5yuRiPs

Life, God, Happiness, People

“Pope Benedict XVI is working softly, slowly, often silently, unobtrusively, behind the scenes, mostly unseen. But he is working hard. I like the great job of reconciliation that he is doing inside the Roman Catholic Church: reconciliation between traditionalists and liberals, conservative and reform-oriented faithful, liturgical Latinists and Mass polyglots, old-time lovers and progressives, high-flying souls and pedestrian believers, thinkers and doers--Christians and Catholics. It is a hidden work of diplomacy, interactions, influences, concessions, agreements, acknowledgments. A "hard job" well done until now.”

Leon Bertoletti (1971)

Christians and Catholics http://www.hicsuntleones.co.uk/2008/10/christians-and-catholics.html, Hic Sunt Leones, 9/10/2008

Faith, Soul, Lovers, Time

“I am interested in detail. I enjoy decoration. By accumulating this mass of detail you throw light on things in a longer sense: in the long run it all adds up. It creates a texture — how shall I put it — a background, a period, which makes everything you write that much more convincing. Of course, all artists are terrible egoists. Unconsciously you are largely writing about yourself. I could never write anything factual; I only have confidence in myself when I am another character. All the characters in my books are myself, but they are a kind of disguise.”

Patrick White (1912–1990) English-born Australian writer

In The Making (1970)

Books, Confidence, Sense, Light

Quotes about mass page 13

Quotes about mass
page 13