Quotes about mob

A collection of quotes on the topic of mob, people, men, doing.

Quotes about mob

Daniel Defoe photo

“From this amphibious ill-born mob began
That vain, ill-natured thing, an Englishman.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Pt. I, l. 132.
The True-Born Englishman http://www.luminarium.org/editions/trueborn.htm (1701)

Hannah Arendt photo
John Lennon photo
Cassiodorus photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Tamora Pierce photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo

“The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for?”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: A W.E.B. Du Bois Reader

Francis Galton photo
Taylor Caldwell photo

“Antonius [i. e., C. Antonius Hybrida] heartily agreed with him [i. e., M. Tullius Cicero] that the budget should be balanced, that the Treasury should be refilled, that public debt should be reduced, that the arrogance of the generals should be tempered and controlled, that assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt, that the mobs should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence, and that prudence and frugality should be put into practice as soon as possible.”

A Pillar of Iron (1965), p. 483 of the 1965 edition published by Doubleday (Garden City, NY), and p. 371 (in chapter 51) of the 1966 British edition from Collins (London). The passage, as written or in shortened or modified form, has sometimes been misattributed to M. Tullius Cicero himself. Its origin and history of misquotation have been discussed at Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/05/15/cicero-budget/ and Snopes http://www.snopes.com/quotes/cicero.asp.
1960s

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Preface.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870)

Napoleon I of France photo

“A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb, and I gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
About

Bob Marley photo

“A hungry mob is an angry mob.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Them Belly Full (But We Hungry), from the album Natty Dread (1974)
Song lyrics

Brigham Young photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo

“They'd boo Santa Claus, this mob.”

Jack Gibson (1929–2008) Australian rugby league player and coach

On the Lang Park crowd during a State of Origin series.

Abraham Lincoln photo
Ennius photo

“One man, by delaying, restored the state to us.
He valued safety more than mob's applause;
Hence now his glory more resplendent grows.”

Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem. Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem; Ergo plusque magisque viri nunc gloria claret.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

Of Fabius Maximus Cunctator, as quoted by Cicero in De Senectute, Chapter IV (Loeb translation)

Theodore Roosevelt photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Martin Luther photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Mark Twain photo

“There has never been a just one, never an honorable one — on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful — as usual — will shout for the war. The pulpit will — warily and cautiously — object — at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers — as earlier — but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation — pulpit and all — will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

originally in The Chronicle of Satan (1905).
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

Abraham Lincoln photo
Barack Obama photo

“The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.  They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed. And for more than two hundred years, we have.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)
Context: The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.  They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed. And for more than two hundred years, we have. Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“If I could ask but one thing of my fellow countrymen, my request would be that, whenever they go in for reform, they remember the two sides, and that they always exact justice from one side as much as from the other. I have small use for the public servant who can always see and denounce the corruption of the capitalist, but who cannot persuade himself, especially before election, to say a word about lawless mob-violence. And I have equally small use for the man”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: If I could ask but one thing of my fellow countrymen, my request would be that, whenever they go in for reform, they remember the two sides, and that they always exact justice from one side as much as from the other. I have small use for the public servant who can always see and denounce the corruption of the capitalist, but who cannot persuade himself, especially before election, to say a word about lawless mob-violence. And I have equally small use for the man, be he a judge on the bench or editor of a great paper, or wealthy and influential private citizen, who can see clearly enough and denounce the lawlessness of mob-violence, but whose eyes are closed so that he is blind when the question is one of corruption of business on a gigantic scale. Also, remember what I said about excess in reformer and reactionary alike. If the reactionary man, who thinks of nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a revolution; and one of my chief fears in connection with progress comes because I do not want to see our people, for lack of proper leadership, compelled to follow men whose intentions are excellent, but whose eyes are a little too wild to make it really safe to trust them.

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“We stand equally against government by a plutocracy and government by a mob.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Letter to Sir Edward Grey (15 September 1913)
1910s
Context: We stand equally against government by a plutocracy and government by a mob. There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with "the money touch," but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Abraham Lincoln photo

“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any case that arises”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)
Context: There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any case that arises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments; and in neither case, is the interposition of mob law, either necessary, justifiable, or excusable.

Rudyard Kipling photo

“I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

A Dead Statesman
Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918) (1918)
Context: I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Thomas Paine photo
Marjorie Taylor Greene photo
Emmeline Pankhurst photo
Rachel Caine photo
Jerry Spinelli photo
Harper Lee photo
J. Michael Straczynski photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
H.L. Mencken photo
Euripidés photo

“Mobs have passions, not brains.”

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 32 (p. 266)

Howard Zinn photo
Charles Baudelaire photo

“Everything that gives pleasure has its reason. To scorn the mobs of those who go astray is not the means to bring them around.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Tout ce qui plaît a une raison de plaire, et mépriser les attroupements de ceux qui s'égarent n'est pas le moyen de les ramener où ils devraient être.
"Quelques mots d'introduction," Salon de 1845 (May 1845) http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Salon_de_1845_%28Curiosit%C3%A9s_esth%C3%A9tiques%29#Quelques_mots_d.E2.80.99introduction

Leigh Brackett photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Lew Rockwell photo
Elie Wiesel photo

“Almost everywhere and at all times the saying of St. Augustine aptly described the situation: "et paupera et inops est ecclesia — the Church is poor and helpless." The Church was powerful only when the state wanted it to be so or when pious laymen had a burning desire to make it so. In the Middle Ages especially the Church was sedulously oppressed: Popes were frequently imprisoned, made the pawns of secular rulers, persecuted, ridiculed, besieged, plundered, exiled, imprisoned and insulted. What about Canossa? People forget how the story ended, and the words of Gregory VII on his death-bed in exile: "Dilexi iustitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio [I loved justice and hated injustice, therefore I die in exile]." Finally there came the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon. It is true that all of this looks quite different in the elementary schools of Kazachstan, in McKinley High and to our intellectuals, whose grasp of history is almost nil.
The situation altered very little in the nineteenth century. Once again there was a prisoner in the Vatican, Pius IX, whose body the mob yelling "Al fiume la carogna!" wanted to throw into the Tiber. This brings us to the twentieth century: Mexico City, Moabit, Dachau, Plötzensee, Auschwitz, Struthof, Carcel Modelo, Andrássy-út 66, Sremska Mitrovica, Vorkuta, Karaganda, Magadan, Lubyanka, Ocnele Mare — these are the modern Stations of the Cross of our clergy. (Pg 128)”

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

The Timeless Christian (1969)

“The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Melinda M. Snodgrass photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

G 32
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

Jack McDevitt photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Guido Ceronetti photo

“Today medical school is attended by mobs, not students; a mob receives its degree, a Doctor-Mob practises the medical profession. We learn to distrust it immediately; this mob may even be armed, may even be equipped with powerful weapons. Whoever wishes to become a doctor should reflect before entering the profession; enter only if you are determined to be different and to adopt different principles and teachings. Otherwise do not enter.”

Guido Ceronetti (1927–2018) Italian poet, writer, journalist and translator

The Silence of the Body: Materials for the Study of Medicine (II silenzio del corpo: Materiali per studio di medicina, 1979), translated by Michael Moore, in The Body in the Library: A Literary Anthology of Modern Medicine, London and New York: Verso, 2003, p. 296 https://books.google.it/books?id=iFRwpEpgCKUC&pg=PA296.

Ann Coulter photo
Alastair Reynolds photo

“It was one of the oldest tricks of mob-management: give them a hate figure.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 4 (p. 66)

Horace Walpole photo

“Our supreme governors, the mob.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Letter to Sir Horace Mann (7 September 1743)

Angela Davis photo
Oriana Fallaci photo

“To make you cry I’ll tell you about the twelve young impure men I saw executed at Dacca at the end of the Bangladesh war. They executed them on the field of Dacca stadium, with bayonet blows to the torso or abdomen, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded in the name of God from the bleachers. They thundered "Allah akbar, Allah akbar." Yes, I know: the ancient Romans, those ancient Romans of whom my culture is so proud, entertained themselves in the Coliseum by watching the deaths of Christians fed to the lions. I know, I know: in every country of Europe the Christians, those Christians whose contribution to the History of Thought I recognize despite my atheism, entertained themselves by watching the burning of heretics. But a lot of time has passed since then, we have become a little more civilized, and even the sons of Allah ought to have figured out by now that certain things are just not done. After the twelve impure young men they killed a little boy who had thrown himself at the executioners to save his brother who had been condemned to death. They smashed his head with their combat boots. And if you don’t believe it, well, reread my report or the reports of the French and German journalists who, horrified as I was, were there with me. Or better: look at the photographs that one of them took. Anyway this isn’t even what I want to underline. It’s that, at the conclusion of the slaughter, the twenty thousand faithful (many of whom were women) left the bleachers and went down on the field. Not as a disorganized mob, no. In an orderly manner, with solemnity. They slowly formed a line and, again in the name of God, walked over the cadavers. All the while thundering Allah–akbar, Allah–akbar. They destroyed them like the Twin Towers of New York. They reduced them to a bleeding carpet of smashed bones.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

Rage and the Pride">

Calvin Coolidge photo
D.H. Lawrence photo

“Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Pornography and Obscenity (1929)

Ilana Mercer photo

“Democrats demonstrate daily that they’re not for the rule of law, but for the law of rule, mob rule.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Party of Man-Haters," https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2018/10/19/the-party-of-manhaters-n2530054 Townhall.com, October 19, 2018
2010s, 2018

Vin Scully photo
John Adams photo

“A mob is still a mob, even if it's on your side.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Adams as portrayed in the HBO Miniseries John Adams (2008); this has sometimes been cited as having been actually said or written by the historical John Adams.
Misattributed

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Pat Condell photo
Anita Sarkeesian photo
Northrop Frye photo

“There can be no free speech in a mob: free speech is one thing a mob can't stand.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence

Leo Igwe photo
Frank B. Jewett photo
Dave Eggers photo
George W. Bush photo
Poul Anderson photo

“Heim ignored the mob scene on the 3V, rested his eyes on the cold serenity of the Milky Way and thought that this, at least, would endure.”

Section 1 “Marque and Reprisal”, Chapter IX (p. 69)
The Star Fox (1965)

John L. Lewis photo
Ann Coulter photo
Michael Swanwick photo
Roman Dmowski photo

“The only salvation for us is to stop being an incoherent, loose mob and to change into a strongly organized, disciplined army.”

Roman Dmowski (1864–1939) Polish politician

"Walka o prawo i organizacja narodowa", Przegląd Wszechpolski, vol. 9 (June 1903).

Margaret Thatcher photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Ma Anand Sheela photo
Robert Frost photo
Richard Arkwright photo
Ann Coulter photo

“A small item but the point is Nixon came in, shut it down, there was the shooting at Kent State, and gosh, I know liberals don't like it and when you look on Nexis and oh, the whole country was embarrassed. Well, I'm not embarrassed. That's what you do with a mob. They were monstrous at Kent State. It was being led by Bill Ayers.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Hannity
2011-06-06
Fox News
Television, quoted in * Ann Coulter On Kent State Massacre: "That's What You Do With A Mob"
Media Matters for America
2011-06-06
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201106060029
2011

Stanisław Jerzy Lec photo

“The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.”

Tłum krzyczy jednymi wielkimi ustami, ale je tysiącem małych.
Unkempt Thoughts (1957)

Michelle Obama photo
William Luther Pierce photo
Harry Harrison photo
Lewis H. Lapham photo
Ron Paul photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo