quotations about mobs
When men take it in their heads to-day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
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address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838
Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviors.
JARON LANIER
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
The crowd has a way of being right.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question.
CRISS JAMI
Healology
Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labor in your fields and serve in your houses -- that man your navy, and recruit your army -- that have enabled you to defy the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob; but do not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people.
LORD BYRON
debate on the Frame-Work Bill in the House of Lords, February 27, 1812
Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.
EMILE ZOLA
The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Marginalia"
Every time the Mob puts the pressure on a good man, tries to stop him from doing his duty as a citizen, it's a crucifixion.
BUDD SCHULBERG
On the Waterfront
A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know--doesn't say much for them, does it?
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob -- not the mob itself.
JONAH GOLDBERG
"Do Liberals Live Under a Tyranny of Cliches?", NPR, May 2, 2012
The sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.
DAN SIMMONS
The Fall of Hyperion
You have no security, no arm of defence, so long as there are among you the materials out of which mobs are made, or tools for the lawless or the ill-disposed to use. Your only safety is in education, in an education which trains up the whole people to love law and order, which trains them up to love virtue and freedom, and which fits them to maintain freedom in the state, by first maintaining it in themselves.
ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON
An Address on Intemperance delivered in Walpole, New Hampshire, February 26, 1833