Mob Quotes

Take away the newspaper - and this country of ours would become a scene of chaos. Without daily assurance of the exact facts - so far as we are able to know and publish them - the public imagination would run riot. Ten days without the daily newspaper and the strong pressure of worry and fear would throw the people of this country into mob hysteria - feeding upon rumors, alarms, terrified by bugbears and illusions. We have become the watchmen of the night and of a troubled day ... ~ Harry Chandler

Ernst Dwinger in his Siberian Diary
mentions a German lieutenant - for years a prisoner in a camp where cold and hunger were almost
unbearable - who constructed himself a silent piano with wooden keys. In the most abject misery,
perpetually surrounded by a ragged mob, he composed a strange music which was audible to him alone.
And for us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished
beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection
which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity. ~ Albert Camus

The very falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved another
this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man
while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude!
how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words
'There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.' He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

She has never understood, nor been able to relate to a herd mentality. She doesn't get along with followers and avoids the bandwagon. She marches to her own tune and does it alone. She's despised by the weak-minded and respected by the strong. She ruffles the feathers of the flock because she champion's the defenseless and pick's on the mob. Does she wish she could not give a damn and live an ordinary life surrounded by nodding and needy ordinary people? At times ... but she'd be bored out of her mind when she's never bored alone, and because of that she's patient because a couple of times in a lifetime she's lucky enough to come across a memorable, magnetic and remarkable person - one worth knowing, even if just for the brevity of a conversation. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to disperse the groups of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, collected round the placards [wanted posters], devouring them with eager eyes. Not the least eager of the eyes assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read. These people, as they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud--there was always some such ready to help them--stared at the characters which meant so much with a vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any aspect of public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and full of evil. ~ Charles Dickens

In the meantime, I would drink, rest, and ponder the meaning of this mob. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

There's definitely a lot of trash that comes with the prize of being famous. It's a nice gift, but there's a lot of wrapping and paper and junk to cut through. Back then, when a movie came out and people saw you on the street, their reaction was so supercharged that it was scary. It would frighten other people. It used to really rattle me. I mean, everybody would love to have their clothes torn off by a mob of girls, but being screamed at is different. ~ Bill Murray

Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines. ~ Paul Brunton

The Mob loved Sinatra not just because he was Italian-American, but because he had crossed over into a nether world in which they could never belong. And he got there because he could do something few people in the world could do as well, and no one in the same way: he could sing. ~ Nancy Jo Sales

As I see it today, Hitler and Goebbels were in fact molded by the mob itself, guided by its yearnings and its daydreams. Of course, Goebbels and Hitler knew how to penetrate through to the instincts of their audiences; but in the deeper sense they derived their whole existence from these audiences. Certainly the masses roared to the beat set by Hitler's and Goebbels' baton; yet they were not the true conductors. The mob determined the theme. To compensate for misery, insecurity, unemployment, and hopelessness, this anonymous assemblage wallowed for hours at a time in obsessions, savagery and license. The personal unhappiness caused by the breakdown of the economy was replaced by a frenzy that demanded victims. By lashing out at their opponents and vilifying the Jews, they gave expression and direction to fierce primal passions. ~ Albert Speer

It's only when the ghastly mob-sleep, the dream helplessness of the mass psyche overcomes him, that he becomes completely base and obscene ~ D.H. Lawrence

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

A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century. ~ H.L. Mencken

And how does a place get spoiled? Well, it is spoiled by people very like us, which reminds us of a further paradox of travel. On the one hand travel is self-enhancing, on the other hand it is rather sneakily demoralizing. We use travel (in vane) to enhance our image: "Yes, sure, I've been to Fiji, but not for years. I hear it's gotten kind of touristy." But though we wear our travels, when they are over, like badges, while we are actually traveling we suffer constant little erosions of self-regard everywhere we go. Because, fond as we may be of the notion of ourselves as "travelers," shrewd as we may be in our choice of destination and lodging and wines, we are aware of ourselves as part of that declassed, identity-blurred worldwide mob. ~ Richard Todd

Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. Put your principles into practice – now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren't a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. The longer you wait, the more you'll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better. From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do – now. ~ Epictetus

All men know that by sheer weight of physical force, the mass of men must in the last resort become the arbiters of human action. But reason, skill, wealth, machines and power may for long periods enable the few to control the many. But to what end? The current theory of democracy is that dictatorship is a stopgap pending the work of universal education, equitable income, and strong character. But always the temptation is to use the stopgap for narrower ends, because intelligence, thrift and goodness seem so impossibly distant for most men. We rule by junta; we turn Fascist, because we do not believe in men; yet the basis of fact in this disbelief is incredibly narrow. We know perfectly well that most human beings have never had a decent human chance to be full men. Most of us may be convinced that even with opportunity the number of utter human failures would be vast; and yet remember that this assumption kept the ancestors of present white America long in slavery and degradation.

It is then one's moral duty to see that every human being, to the extent of his capacity, escapes ignorance, poverty and crime. With this high ideal held unswervingly in view, monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorships may rule; but the end will be the rule of All, if mayhap All or Most qualify. The only unforgivable sin is dictatorship for the benefit of Fools, Voluptuaries, gilded Satraps, Prostitutes and Idiots. The rule of the famished, unlettered, stinking mob is better than this and the on ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Others did not fare so well. A German man in St. Louis who was believed to have spoken ill of his adopted country was set upon by a mob, dragged through the streets tied up in an American flag, and hanged. A jury subsequently found the mob leaders not guilty on the grounds that it had been a patriotic murder. ~ Bill Bryson

I imagine that in a closed, hermetic society like the mob, where everybody knows each other, it must be really, really unpleasant to have to kill people. It's the sort of thing you really want to avoid. ~ Andrew Dominik

For every summons to a shining city on the hill or a promise of change we can believe in, we are presented with hundreds of examples of mudslinging and appeals to mob mentality. Rudeness is recast as honesty, greed is presented as ambition, and lines in the sand blur and move. ~ Nikki Stern

Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly. To his contemporaries it appeared frivolous and contradictory to perform as both superman and socialist, sceptic and believer, legalist and heretic, high-brow and mob-orator. But feeling the duty to teach as well as to mirror mankind, Shaw did not accept himself as a contradictory being. ~ Jacques Barzun

People who label erotica writers as sluts/men-whores remind me of the mob that once condemned smart women as witches. Mankind has not evolved much. ~ Anna Bayes

It has been very truly said that the mob has many heads, but no brains. ~ Antoine Rivarol

This benefit of seeing ... can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image ... the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate. ~ Dorothea Lange

America was a land of machines, and it was through machines, the miraculous handmaidens of mob culture, that the muses of illiteracy brought America her voice and vision during the years of the immigrants' waves. Centuries ago, movable type had given literacy to the common man. Now, through these wondrous newer machines, he would give it back. ~ Nick Tosches

after you've pulled off the tablecloth with
the full plates of food
and broken the windows
and rung the bells of
idiots
and have
spoken true and terrible
words
and have
chased the mob through the
doorway-
then comes the great and
peaceful moment: sitting alone
and
pouring that quiet drink.

the world is better without
them.

only the plants and the animals are
true comrades.

I drink to them and with
them.

they wait as I fill their
glasses. ~ Charles Bukowski

Control yourselves. Be orderly. Don't blow any of us up. Am I understood?'
A quick nod. 'Aye, sir. Bless you, sir.'
Startled, Paran's voice sharpened, 'Bless me?'
And from the mob of sappers came a muttered chorus, echoing the corporal's blessing. Paran stepped back, struggled for a moment to regain his composure, and then raised his voice. 'No need to rush – there's plenty for everyone. ~ Steven Erikson

The argument of socialists, that people really want to share, beyond a reasonable level of charity, is rubbish, though it is espoused by a lot of rich, pious hypocrites who want to share only enough to avoid widespread starvation, mob violence, and government seizure of more of their incomes. ~ Conrad Black

Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want? ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

You will never have to worry about safety. Being a Dardano will buy you all the security you'll ever need."
Bree shook her head and threw her hands up. "Being a Dardano will put the bulls eye on my back, you asshole,"
"Really, darling, once you become Mrs. Dardano, we're going to have to work on cleaning up that saucy mouth of yours. At least in public," Alessandro purred, tapping her nose.
Bree saw red. But she smiled at him. She took the plate from him and set it down on the vanity table. Then she took the vitamin shake, pulled out the waistband of his pants and poured it down inside. ~ E. Jamie

But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right. ~ Ray Stannard Baker

I had a feeling Aunt Bette was thinking of taking on the Russian mob. ~ Kristen Ashley

A river is easier to channel than to stop. ~ Brandon Sanderson

After the merch booth has closed, I join the melee, but am nudged to the middle of the mob, and then the back, where I stand on my toes to watch person after person embrace my husband. Jeff's words from our pseudo-poker game rise to the surface of my consciousness and bob there, refusing to be silenced. This is the very definition of being a supporting character. But I don't really mind that I'm this far away - I can still see the smile on his face as bright as a spotlight, and his joy seems to vibrate across the distance. Surely everyone knows what a big deal this must be to him, but I still look at him and remember the subway musician hunched over his guitar, sitting on a narrow stool, guitar case open at his feet. And now here he is, wearing a suit, standing beside Ramón Martín, and getting the praise and adoration of an entire cast and crew. I'm still on the sidelines, but I helped make that happen. ~ Christina Lauren

If this is a lynch mob, you didn't bring enough people, I said. ~ Ilona Andrews

Witnessing the blind fury of this mob and seeing them kill before my eyes the Jews who refused to be converted (some out of faith, and others from that pride which can sometimes be perilous), I answered that I would rather be converted than killed, since, in spite of everything, the temporary agony of being is more valuable than the ultimate void of nothingness. ~ Danilo Kis

In a democracy sovereignity is vested in a majority; and a majority is not only, at best, an ignorant, foolish and emotional mob, but shifts continually and alters from year to year. ~ Jean Bodin

The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob ~ H.L. Mencken

- It lacks glamour?
- It lacks mob emotion-appeal.
- Same thing. ~ Isaac Asimov

Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions. ~ H.L. Mencken

There was some banging around in the hall, and Aunt Prue appeared in the doorway in an equally large and disturbing hat. This one was black, with a wraparound veil that made Aunt Prue look like the mother of a mob boss at his funeral. ~ Kami Garcia

We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob ... [The organized moneyed people] are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred ... I should like to have it said of my second administration that these forces met their master. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

I pull his hand up to my chest. "It's okay. Some of my best friends are in the mob. It must be really tough with your husband in prison."
"You THINK?" He pulls away, as if I've been insensitive, picks up a stone and throws it at a crow walking around in the grass.
As the crow screeches bloody murder and takes flight, escaping unscathed, Joshua darts in front of me, hits Tiger in the nuts and calls him a bitch.
Pulling Joshua back to my right, I glare down at him asking- WHAT did you CALL HIM?
"A BITCH."
"He's not a bitch."
"YES HE IS."
Tiger, coming to the rescue, kneels and places his hand on Joshua's shoulder. "Sorry little buddy. I didn't mean to make you go all APE shit. You like those little flying RATS."
Joshua shakes his finger at him. "THEY'RE NOT RATS... YOU BITCH."
As I start to give Joshua a lecture, Tiger stands up and stops me. "It's okay," he said. "Believe it or not- he's not the first to call me a bitch." Taking Joshua's free hand, he walks on his other side, while Joshua glares up at him with distrust. "Bitch isn't a word that you should be using. Not at your AGE."
"That's right," I agreed. "When you get older, you can call your girlfriend a bitch, but only in bed."
Joshua giggles. ~ Giorge Leedy

As they passed through the exit, Indrani pulled Zarina's stole over her head, covering half of her face. The two words - not guilty - had changed Zarina's stature in minutes, from a relentless human rights activist to someone running for cover. They climbed down the stairs and rushed to the parking lot. Zarina's car was in a pathetic condition - smashed windscreen, deflated tyres, broken rear view mirrors and torn upholstery. An exasperated Zarina raised her hands in utter disgust. Mob fury. Idiots, if they have won the case, let them celebrate their victory; why smash my car? The fighter in her forced Zarina to take out her cell phone and click pictures of her car from different angles. ~ Hariharan Iyer

Pretty soft!' he cried. 'To have to come and live in New York! To have to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!'
I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
'It would kill me to have to live in New York,' he went on. 'To have to share the air with six million people! TO have to wear stiff collars and decent clothes all the time! To - ' He started. 'Good Lord! I suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a ghastly notion!'
I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
'My dear chap!' I said, reproachfully.
'Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?'
'Jeeves,' I said coldly. 'How many suits of evening clothes have we?'
'We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets- '
'Three.' ~ P.G. Wodehouse

[Author's Note:] It took me four years to research and write this novel, so I began long before talk about migrant caravans and building a wall entered the national zeitgeist. But even then I was frustrated by the tenor of the public discourse surrounding immigration in this country. The conversation always seemed to turn around policy issues, to the absolute exclusion of moral or humanitarian concerns. I was appalled at the way Latino migrants, even five years ago - and it has gotten exponentially worse since then - were characterized within that public discourse. At worst, we perceive them as an invading mob of resource-draining criminals, and at best, a sort of helpless, impoverished, faceless brown mass, clamoring for help at our doorstep. We seldom think of them as our fellow human beings. People with the agency to make their own decisions, people who can contribute to their own bright futures, and to ours, as so many generations of oft-reviled immigrants have done before them. ~ Jeanine Cummins

I like that," Bree admitted. "It's like…it's never too late to change." Her eyes met his, and she hoped he understood that she meant it for him as well as for herself. She wanted Alessandro to give in to the good she knew was in him and leave the Dardano family behind.
"I forgot about that. I feel rather ashamed of it now. Because of the things I've done. Then I was looking at this tiny creature here, and you're going to think I'm mad but…every time I look at him, he looks different to me. He's the same boy, but something in him is always changing. It's not a physical thing that I can explain to you, but it's…like…I don't know," Alessandro said shrugging and lowering his head. He sat on the bed next to her and stared at the incubator. The baby's eyes were open, staring back, blinking slowly, sleepily.
"You're seeing him become a person. Like all the parts of him are coming together and making this tiny person's soul. He was one person in here," Bree pointed to her stomach. "And now he's changing on the outside so he can be a part of the world."
"That's it," Alessandro nodded. "He's a part of the world now. My world, in a completely different way than when he was inside of you. It's like having two sons and watching them become one as a slow minute by minute process. He's never going to stop changing. What he thinks and feels now is not going to be what he thinks and feels tomorrow or fifty years from now."
"It's the same for you," Bree said, closing he ~ E. Jamie

I was thinking about how free of mobs recent centuries had been: to create a mob there must be public meetings, and public meetings in our time consisted of individuals communing via the All Thing or other datasphere channels; it is hard to create mob passion when people are separated by kilometers and light-years, connected only by comm lines and fatline threads. ~ Dan Simmons

Enclosures have appropriately been called a revolution of the rich is against the poor. The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of vio¬lence, often by pressure and intimidation. They were literally robbing the poor of their share in the common, tearing down the houses which, by the hitherto unbreakable force of custom, the poor had long regarded as theirs and their heirs'. The fabric of society was being disrupted; desolate villages and the ruins of human dwellings testified to the fierce¬ness with which the revolution raged, endangering the defenses of the country, wasting its towns, decimating its population, turning its over¬burdened soil into dust, harassing its people and turning them from decent husbandmen into a mob of beggars and thieves. ~ Karl Polanyi

The angry mob of villagers wield camera phones, the twenty-first century equivalent of pitchforks and flaming torches. ~ Erin Kelly

The Day women were the definition of mob mentality. And here they were on a farm with plenty of pitchforks. ~ Gillian Flynn

If all, or almost all, the plays that are popular now, imaginative works as well as historical ones, are known to be nonsense and without rhyme or reason, and despite this the mob hears them with pleasure and thinks of them and approves of them as good, when they are very far from being so, and the authors who compose them and the actors who perform them say they must be like this because that is just how the mob wants them, and no other way; the plays that have a design and follow the story as art demands appeal to a handful of discerning persons who understand them, while everyone else is incapable of comprehending their artistry; and since, as far as the authors and actors are concerned, it is better to earn a living with the crowd than a reputation with the elite, this is what would happen to my book after I had singed my eyebrows trying to keep the precepts I have mentioned and had become the tailor who wasn't paid. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Stella's?"
"It's a restaurant called Bella Stella in Little Italy."
He frowned. "On Mulberry Street."
"You know it?" That didn't surprise me. It was a pretty famous place.
"Of course I know it, Esther. There've been two mob hits there in the
past five years, and Stella Butera launders money for the Gambello crime
family."
Okay, so it was notorious as well as famous. ~ Laura Resnick

At the United Nations, a lynch mob for Israel is always just a moment away. ~ Elliott Abrams

For as in nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar person, so in nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have been) better to be discerned from a mob, than in this, - that their feelings are constant and just, results of due contemplation, and of equal thought. You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be - usually are - on a whole, generous and right; but it has no foundation for them, no hold of them; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on; nothing so great but it will forget in an hour, when the fit is past. ~ John Ruskin

If there is trouble in the country, neither I nor my people made it, and all that we have ever done, after much endurance on our part, is to maintain and uphold the constitution and institutions of our country, and to protect an injured, innocent, and persecuted people against misrule and mob violence. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

What was he like? Red Abed?" She was remarkable. Loyal and brave and beautiful as a ship under sail. We ran through moonlit gardens and defied an angry mob. "I spent an afternoon with him," Sparhawk said. "He was old and frail, but he had forgotten more about the sea than I shall ever know." And I will mourn his daughter all my days. ~ Donna Thorland

The aggressive use of wiretaps is important: It shows that we are targeting white-collar insider-trading rings with the same powerful investigative tools that have worked so successfully against the mob and drug cartels. ~ Preet Bharara

Will, was not as taken with the photo of the new baby as the grown ups around him. "It look like Mr. Potato Head." "I'm sure your baby sister will appreciate that," Alessandro said with a wry grin. "A girl? It's a girl?" Will asked with a grimace. "That's right," Bree announced as Vanessa and Brian congratulated them. "I can play wif Gianni but what we gonna do wif a girl?" he asked, handing the picture back to them. "Nope, send it back
and get another boy dis time. ~ E. Jamie

When I swung the door open, Nathan looked me up and down. "Uh, hi." He awkwardly looked at my outfit and then down at his own black pants and t-shirt.
We both laughed and walked into the room side by side.
Warren rolled his eyes. "Geez," he said. "Should I change? I feel like I don't fit in with the mob squad." He was wearing jeans and a blue t-shirt. ~ Elicia Hyder

A mob always picked its own leaders, and it always picked the right ones. ~ Stephen King

A guilty man is punished as an example for the mob; an innocent man convicted is the business of every honest citizen. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

With his head thrust forward like a ram, Baryba pushed his way through to the front. For some reason this was necessary, he felt with all his guts that it was necessary. He clenched his iron jaws. Something bestial stirred in him, something he hungered for, some murderous instinct. To be with everybody, to howl like everybody, to hit the one that everybody else was hitting. ("A Provincial Tale") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

I swear to God ... "
"God doesn't come to this part of the house, so swear to me." -Liam C ~ J.J. McAvoy

She moved to get up, but the man held her down as her car exploded next.
Bree lifted her head and looked back at the wall of fire behind them. "Well. We're well and truly screwed now. ~ E. Jamie

Remember that most people, human or cryptid, don't like what they don't understand. They're not wired for that kind of compassion. Feel sorry for them, unless they form an angry mob and march on your house. When that happens, release the hounds. - Evelyn Baker ~ Seanan McGuire

In the spring, during the Festival of Flora, when Rome was crowded with visitors from all over Italy, Clodius's mob found itself for once outnumbered by ordinary citizens who despised their bullying tactics. Clodius himself was actually jeered at the theatre. Unused to anything other than adulation from the people, according to Atticus he looked around him in astonishment at the slow handclapping, taunts, whistles and obscene gestures, and realised - almost too late - that he was in danger of being lynched. He retreated hastily, and that was the beginning of the end of his domination, for the Senate now recognised how he could be beaten: by appealing over the heads of the ~ Robert Harris

This is a pretty shitty flash mob. It's in my living room, only my family showed up, and they're just telling me to stop drinking. ~ Megan Amram

Wanting to leave communist Russia is all fine and well | Actually leaving the country is where you might run into a few setbacks. Obtaining a visa for a simple vacation outside the soviet block was a long and arduous process. To immigrate to a free society was about as easy as finding whiskey in a church. ~ Gary Govich

The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

For the mob is always impressed by appearances and by results, and the world is composed of the mob. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Before Mags became a household name across Scotland, it was during the mid Nineties when she became an avid anti-paedophile campaigner against paedophiles on the Raploch Estate, attracting media attention, even appearing on Robert Kilroy-Silk's morning TV show. At the height of her anti-paedophilic crusade, she led a howling mob of protesters to a hostel near her home where a known paedophile was staying. ~ Stephen Richards

When you're part of a mob, the mob is a monster. A person in a mob is nothing like the person you sit and chat with in the kitchen. Drinking ~ Svetlana Alexievich

Only the myopic magnifying lens of the television camera maintains the demonstration, march, and picketing as a modality of political expression; they have otherwise faded into meaninglessness since the end of the Vietnam War with the shift of urban form and activity. These acts and activities have been displaced over the past decade from the square and main street to the windswept emptiness of City Hall Mall or Federal Building Plaza. To encounter a ragtag mob of protesters in such places today renders them enve more pathetic, their marginality enforced by a physcial displacement into so unimportant, uninhabited, and unloved a civic location. ~ Trevor Boddy

My favorite movie, one of 'em is [Notorious]. I love Scarface as well. I've got a lot of mob movies. ~ Ace Hood

The Russian Revolution is a radical change in history. The abolition of private property has created a new world. You may like it or detest it, but it's new. Hitler's socialism was a sham to get a mob of gangsters into power. He's frozen the German economy just as it was, smashed the labor unions, lengthened the working hours, cut the pay, and kept all the old rich crowd on top, the Krupps and Thyssens, the men who gave him the money to run for office. The big Nazis live like barons, like sultans. The concentration camps are for anybody who still wants the socialist part of National Socialism."

[...]

"I'm sorry. I'm impressed with Hitler's ability to use socialist prattle when necessary, and then discard it. He uses doctrines as he uses money, to get things done. They're expendable. He uses racism because that's the pure distillate of German romantic egotism, just as Lenin used utopian Marxism because it appealed to Russia's messianic streak. Hitler means to hammer out a united Europe.... He understands them, and he may just succeed. A unified Europe must come. The medieval jigsaw of nations is obsolete. The balance of power is dangerous foolishness in the industrial age. It must all be thrown out. Somebody has to be ruthless enough to do it, since the peoples with their ancient hatreds will never do it themselves. It's only Napoleon's original vision, but he was a century ahead of his time. ~ Herman Wouk

The mob is primarily a group in which the residue of all classes are represented. This makes it so easy to mistake the mob for the people, which also comprises all strata of society. While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation, the mob always will shout for the "strong man," the "great leader." For the mob hates society from which it is excluded, as well as Parliament where it is not represented. ~ Hannah Arendt

People were murdered for the camera; and some photographers and a television camera crew departed without taking a picture in the hope that in the absence of cameramen acts might not be committed. Others felt that the mob was beyond appeal to mercy. They stayed and won Pulitzer Prizes. Were they right? ~ Harold Evans

Join the mob or go for what you want. Give yourself plenty of quiet time alone in order to get in touch with who you are ... Focus power of thought. Remind yourself that the world is yours for the asking. The non-risker does not grow, you just get older. When you have decided which ideas, beliefs, relationships, and situations no longer work for you, it is time to release them. Let go of negative thoughts - view them as a flight of birds crossing your path. See them fly into view and continue on their way.' - from Joan Root's diary ~ Mark Seal

I doubt if Mrs. Wiggins ever appeared more truly heroic than at that moment. Ordinarily the most peace-loving of a peace-loving race, when she had pledged herself to a cause which she thought right she was capable of taking a firm stand even in the face of the most determined opposition. Few other cows, I am certain, would have cared to address that angry mob. Fortunately, she was able to address them and be heard, for Bertram was for the moment engaged with the four animals who had run upstairs to attack him. ~ Walter R. Brooks

Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers. ~ James Stockdale

For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbors, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honors, produces a reign of mere violence. ~ Polybius

Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

This spirit of mob-law is becoming as great an evil as a servile war. ~ Andrew Jackson

The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, snivelling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goosesteppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages. ~ H.L. Mencken

Mob rule can not be allowed to override the decisions of our courts. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

They look so tired, so hot!" everyone kept saying, but not one of them thought to open their doors, to invite one of these wretches inside, to welcome them into the shady bits of heaven that the refugees could glimpse behind the houses, where wooden benches nestled in arbours amid redcurrant bushes and roses. There were just too many of them. Too many weary, pale faces, dripping with sweat, too many wailing children, too many trembling lips asking, "Do you know where we could get a room? A bed?" … "Would you tell us where we could find a restaurant, please, Madame?" It prevented the townspeople from being charitable. There was nothing human left in this miserable mob; they were like a herd of frightened animals. Their crumpled clothes, crazed faces, hoarse voices, everything about them made them look peculiarly alike, so you couldn't tell them apart. ~ Irene Nemirovsky

So could we please not mob the three-thousand-plus-year-old reaper like tweens at a boy-band concert? ~ Rachel Vincent

Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians' jobs ... When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that's when the real weirdness begins. ~ Matt Taibbi

Pickpockets either work alone or in pairs, or what is called a mob. ~ Harry Houdini

The gremlin mob turned on Root, and when they saw the triple-barreled blaster on his hip, they kept right on turning. Root grabbed the microphone from behind the desk, and hauled it out to the extent of its cable. "Now hear this," he growled, his gravelly tones echoing around the terminal. "This is Commander Root of the LEP. We have a serious situation above ground, and I would appreciate cooperation from all you civilians. First, I would like you all to stop your yapping so I can hear myself think!" Root paused to make certain his wishes were being respected. They were. "Secondly, I would like every single one of you, including those squawling infants, to sit down on the courtesy benches until I have gone on my way. Then you can get back to griping or stuffing your faces. Or whatever else it is civilians do." No one had ever accused Root of political correctness. No one was ever likely to either. ~ Eoin Colfer

I could not help weeping with him - not over my own fate which, however clearly laid out, was just as sad as his, but over the injustices, the iniquities, and the crimes to which the exploited poor are always and everywhere subjected to, by a mob of scoundrels and trash who deck themselves out in many-colored robes, in helmet and plumed hats, in gold and silver embroideries, and take themselves titles of majesty, holiness, eminence, lordship, in order to fleece, bleed, and slaughter the poor. ~ Jean-Marie Deguignet

finding easy scapegoats for complicated problems had been a human pastime since the first mob of cavemen struck someone down with a rock. ~ Neal Shusterman

Training distinguishes an army from an armed mob. ~ Douglas MacArthur

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles, and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved. ~ Baruch Spinoza

In just about every gangster movie there is a scene where the mob boss says, 'Hey, I'm just a businessman. ~ William Hageman

When they were done, the stones lay heaped upon the still form. The crowd dispersed like crows flying from empty bones. The elders picked up their robes and walked away. The mob was now silent. No one met the gaze of his neighbor. They drifted away, until only Ezra stood at one side, Saul on the other. ~ Janette Oke

All that is necessary to raise imbecility into what the mob regards as profundity is to lift it off the floor and put it on a platform. ~ George Jean Nathan

I detest audiences - not in their individual components, but en masse I detest audiences. I think they're a force of evil. It seems to me rule of mob law. ~ Glenn Gould

Stephen remained untouched. Instead, the illumination surrounding him strengthened further, as though all light in the chamber was drawn to this one man. Stephen lifted his face toward the chamber's ceiling and cried, "Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" These words unleashed both the Council and the mob. The chamber was filled with shrill cries demanding he be condemned to death. ~ Janette Oke

Did you hear what I said? She's ex-Mob. Her gun probably eats guns like that for breakfast. ~ Anna Banks