Quotes · Skopia

32 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·The masses✕clear

Autobiography and memoir

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 7.8

Only two things does he anxiously wish for-bread and circuses.

Satires · 127

★ 7.3

Film · Historical drama (film) · Drama (film) · Historical drama · Drama

Are you not entertained?

Maximus Decimus Meridius

Gladiator · 2000

★ 7.2

Play · Tragedy (play)

He’s loved of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes.

William Shakespeare

Hamlet · 1616

★ 7.0

For who can be secure of private right, If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might? Nor is the people's judgement always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.

Absalom and Achitophel · 1681

★ 6.9

Autobiography and memoir

The great masses of the people...more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one.

Mein Kampf · 1925

★ 5.4

The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees.

1526

★ 4.5

Philosophical literature

If you desire what is good, the people will be good. The character of a ruler is like wind and that of the people is like grass. In whatever direction the wind blows the grass always bends.

Analects · 221 BC

★ 4.0

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

So long as the great majority of men are not deprived of either property or honour, they are satisfied.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1532

★ 4.0

Novel · Dystopian fiction

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.9

The people are a many-headed beast.

20 BC

★ 3.8

When the masses get involved in reasoning, everything is lost.

1766

★ 3.8

Film · Drama (film) · Drama

I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion. If everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way.

Glengarry Glen Ross · 1992

★ 3.8

Film · Science fiction (film) · Action (film) · Science fiction · Action

You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

The Matrix · 1999

★ 3.8

Personal journal

Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

1904

★ 3.7

Nor is the people's judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.

Absalom and Achitophel · 1681

★ 3.6

Film · Comedy (film) · Comedy

What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public, alight?

Tommy Boy · 1995

★ 3.6

If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, 'tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong: their judgement is a mere lottery.

1668

★ 3.5

The future belongs to crowds.

1991

★ 3.5

Film · Historical drama (film) · Drama (film) · Historical drama · Drama

The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it's the sand of the Coliseum. He'll bring them death—and they will love him for it.

Gracchus (Gladiator)

Gladiator · 2000

★ 3.5

If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.

1918

★ 3.5

Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.

1927

★ 3.5

Novel · Dystopian fiction

"If there is hope," he had written in the diary, "it lies in the proles."

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 2.3

Not choice But habit rules the unreflecting herd.

William Wordsworth

1822

★ 2.0

Presocratic fragment · Fragment · Philosophical literature

The best choose one thing instead of everything, everlasting fame among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.

★ 2.0

And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.

800

★ 1.9

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 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.

Alexander Hamilton

1787

★ 1.9

Play · Drama (play)

Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.

1884

★ 1.9

Film · Neo-noir · Psychological thriller (film) · Psychological thriller

But you gotta be a, a hero. You want to be a champion. Well, let me tell you, people don't want a champion. They want to eat cheeseburgers, play the lotto, and watch television.

William Somerset

Se7en · 1995

★ 1.9

Article · Newspaper

No one in this world, so far as I know...has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

1926

★ 1.9

The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived.

1855

★ 1.1

Historical literature

[Education] has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

1942

★ 0.9