Rabble Quotes

McCain said the lower gas prices were sitting somewhere under the Gulf of Mexico. Obama said they were sitting in the bank accounts of companies like Exxon in the form of windfall profits to be taxed.

The formula was the same formula we see in every election: Republicans demonize government, sixties-style activism, and foreigners. Democrats demonize corporations, greed, and the right-wing rabble.

Both candidates were selling the public a storyline that had nothing to do with the truth. Gas prices were going up for reasons completely unconnected to the causes these candidates were talking about. What really happened was that Wall Street had opened a new table in its casino. The new gaming table was called commodity index investing. And when it became the hottest new game in town, America suddenly got a very painful lesson in the glorious possibilities of taxation without representation. Wall Street turned gas prices into a gaming table, and when they hit a hot streak we ended up making exorbitant involuntary payments for a commodity that one simply cannot live without. ~ Matt Taibbi

I am a member of the rabble in good standing. ~ Westbrook Pegler

That such lowly beginnings would soon become one of the world's strongest dictatorships is beyond fantastic. Lenin was essentially a pamphleteer. In 1918 he was identified as "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and journalist," and earned more money from publication honoraria (15,000 rubles) than from his salary (10,000 rubles).17 Trotsky was a writer as well, and a grandiloquent orator, but similarly without experience or training in statecraft. Sverdlov was something of an amateur forger, thanks to his father's engraving craft, and a crack political organizer but hardly an experienced policy maker. Stalin was also an organizer, a rabble-rouser, and, briefly, a bandit, but primarily a periodicals editor - commissar of nationalities was effectively his first regular employment since his brief stint as a teenage Tiflis weatherman. Now, ~ Stephen Kotkin

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding. ~ Epicurus

Many rabble-rousers for libertarianism, liberty and freedom are unwitting pawns of controllers they have never even considered. ~ Bryant McGill

Life is fountain of joy; but where the rabble also gather to drink, all wells are poisoned. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Nour El Dine felt much more comfortable with the vagabonds, the rabble born to commit sordid offenses. At least you could frighten them. But these disreputable intellectuals were forever breaking down all sense of authority in him. Nour El Dine considered himself a reasonable being; that is, he believed in the existence of the government and in the speeches pronounced by ministers. He had blind faith in the institutions of the civilized world. The attitude of Yeghen and his fellow men always disconcerted him; they appeared not to realize that there was a government. They were not against the government; they simply were not aware of it. ~ Albert Cossery

Since ancient times, the philosophers' secret has always been this: we know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he's utterly indifferent to our individual affairs
but we can't let the rabble know that; it's the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own. ~ Robert J. Sawyer

The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The menacing majesty of Enjolras disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: "There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo." A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered his gun, saying: "It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower. ~ Victor Hugo

I'll be in an institution for paupers, happy in my utter defeat, mixed up with the rabble of would-be geniuses who were no more than beggars with dreams, thrown in with the anonymous throng of those who didn't have strength enough to conquer nor renunciation enough to conquer by not competing. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live without feeling the country beneath our feet,
our words are inaudible from ten steps away.
Any conversation, however brief,
gravitates, gratingly, toward the Kremlin's mountain man.
His greasy fingers are thick as worms,
his words weighty hammers slamming their target.
His cockroach moustache seems to snicker,
and the shafts of his high-topped boots gleam.
Amid a rabble of scrawny-necked chieftains,
he toys with the favors of such homunculi.
One hisses, the other mewls, one groans, the other weeps;
he prowls thunderously among them, showering them with scorn.
Forging decree after decree, like horseshoes,
he pitches one to the belly, another to the forehead,
a third to the eyebrow, a fourth in the eye.
Every execution is a carnival
that fills his broad Ossetian chest with delight. ~ Osip Mandelstam

American business men must learn human nature to the point of accepting as necessary the Rabble Rouser of the Right ... To get fast action somebody must stir millions to genuine anger over conditions which are adversely affecting their lives. ~ Walter B. Pitkin

in the first place, Majesty, a pyramid is power. It is repression,force,and wealth. But it is just as much: domination of the rabble; the narrowing of its mind; the weakening of its will; monotony; and waste. O my Pharaoh, it is your most reliable guardian. Your secret police. Your army. Your fleet. Your harem. The higher it is, the tinier your subjects will seem. And the smaller your subjects, the more you rise, o Majesty, to your full height. ~ Ismail Kadare

The rabble estimate few things according to their real value, most things according to their prejudices. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber. ~ Edmund Burke

Who are the rabble and who are the ruled? ~ Frank Herbert

The city was shredding them block by block. No place was safe. The air was alive with hurtling chunks of hot metal. They heard the awful slap of bullets into flesh and heard the screams and saw the insides of men's bodies spill out and watched the gray blank parlor rise in the faces of their friends, and the best of the men fought back despair. They were America's elite fighters and the were going to die here, outnumbered by this determined rabble. Their future was setting with this sun on this day and in this place. ~ Mark Bowden

Yes; even if a gentleman should lose his whole substance, he must never give way to annoyance. Money must be so subservient to gentility as never to be worth a thought. Of course, the SUPREMELY aristocratic thing is to be entirely oblivious of the mire of rabble, with its setting; but sometimes a reverse course may be aristocratic to remark, to scan, and even to gape at, the mob (for preference, through a lorgnette), even as though one were taking the crowd and its squalor for a sort of raree show which had been organised specially for a gentleman's diversion. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The religion of Jesus is founded in the Unity of God, and this principle chiefly gave it triumph over the rabble of heathen gods then acknowledged. Thinking men of all nations rallied readily to the doctrine of one only God, and embraced it with the pure-morals which Jesus inculcated. ~ Thomas Jefferson

If true love breaks as easily as a delusion, on what can we rely? What will people pin their hopes on?" [Nilima]
"They'll have the sweet, intimate memories of a lost paradise, and beside it a sea of sorrow ... People looking on from outside think all is lost ... What remains when everything is lost can be held in the palm, like a jewel. It can't be flaunted in a pageant, so the lookers-on are disappointed and jeer as they return home.." [Kamal]
" ... Jewels are not meant for everybody, certainly not for the rabble. People who're only happy when decked out with gold and silver from top to toe won't understand the value of your tiny diamonds and gems. Those who want a lot feel secure only after tying knot upon knot. They put a price on something only by its weight and show and bulk. But it's useless to try and show the sunrise from a western window..[Nilima] ~ Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

We've just gone through this period of years where the players in the game were at least written about as being a Democratic administration, establishment Republicans, and then the rabble-rousing radicals of the tea party. And it was like a three-way negotiation between them. But we are going to enter an era where there's a physical, powerful, vibrant progressive movement that will, I think, be able to exercise power in the same way as the right-wing and the right does. ~ Ben Wikler

In a moment of acute anxiety a year earlier, John Adams had wondered what would happen if "the multitude, the vulgar, the herd, the rabble" maintained such open defiance of authority. 13 ~ Ron Chernow

Teach me your way of looking at people:
as you glanced at Peter after his denial,
as you penetrated the heart of the rich young man
and the hearts of your disciples.
I would like to meet you as you really are,
since your image changes those with whom you
come into contact.
Remember John the Baptist's first meeting with you?
And the centurion's feeling of unworthiness?
And the amazement of all those who saw miracles
and other wonders?
How you impressed your disciples,
the rabble in the Garden of Olives,
Pilate and his wife
and the centurion at the foot of the cross. . . .
I would like to hear and be impressed
by your manner of speaking,
listening, for example, to your discourse in the
synagogue in Capharnaum
or the Sermon on the Mount where your audience
felt you "taught as one who has authority. ~ Pedro Arrupe

For some reason all activity, all happiness on the part of other people made me feel like vomiting. I was aware that my own life was finished and was slowly and painfully guttering out. What earthly reason had I to concern myself with the lives of the fools, the rabble-people who were fit and healthy, ate well, slept well, and copulated well and who had never experienced a particle of my sufferings or felt the wings of death every minute brushing against their faces? ~ Sadegh Hedayat

The will of a majority is the will of a rabble. Progressive democracy is incompatable with liberty. ~ John C. Calhoun

The Ragamuffin rabble are the unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on His mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth. Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary. ~ Brennan Manning

Compare with such a one the common rabble of mankind, stupid and mean-spirited, servile, instable, and continually floating with the tempest of various passions, that tosses and tumbles them to and fro, and all depending upon others, and you will find a greater distance than betwixt heaven and earth; and yet the blindness of common usage is such that we make little or no account of it; whereas if we consider a peasant and a king, a nobleman and a vassal, a magistrate and a private man, a rich man and a poor, there appears a vast disparity, though they differ no more, as a man may say, than in their breeches. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Without discipline a body of men becomes rabble. Rabble dies, either on the battlefield or in a POW camp. ~ W. E. B. Griffin

Ah! I wish I had the courage to work for the debasement of my contemporaries. What good work it would be to defile their daughters: to insinuate something obscene into the infantile hands which caress each paternal beard and cheek; to poison them, even at the risk of perishing ourselves; to do as those Spanish monks did, who drank death in order that they might persuade the French rabble which had violated their monastery to do likewise. ~ Remy De Gourmont

The earthquakes in people's heads, half the city's population was cracked, a rabble of doom-merchants, psychos, ghouls. They could smell a funeral a mile off, and out they crawled, out of the woodwork. A funeral lit them up, it was like fuel, it kept them burning for days. ~ Rupert Thomson

Who could not be moved by the sight of that poor, demoralized rabble, outwitted, outflanked, outmanoeuvered by the U.S. military? Yet, given time, I think the press will bounce back. ~ James Baker

I abhor the profane rabble and keep them at a distance. ~ Horace

A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat. ~ Norman Mailer

If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don't read that hogwash, but rather leave it for the reptile from whom it has been fabricated. ~ Albert Einstein

Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala apostles, who undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker's sense of satisfaction with his small existence-who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal rights but the claim of "equal" rights. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the Land Tax Act which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply which gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. ~ Edmund Burke

Good and decent people must be protected and persuaded by gentle means, but the rabble must be led by terror. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Yet for all that, there is nothing in me of a founder of a religion
religions are affairs of the rabble; I find it necessary to wash my hands after I have come into contact with religious people. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

My raps are a decision, rabble rousing, spiritual, like gospel music. I don't want to dance. We have so many things to deal with, we need to talk straight up and down. ~ Tupac Shakur

Woe! Woe! Woe!
"Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of His pasture!
"Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood and by iniquity!
"Woe unto you that are rich! For ye have received your consolation!
"Woe to the pastors who are brutish and have not sought the Lord!
"Woe to the Inquisitors, for Jesus will inquire unto them!
"Blessed are the faggots, for their voices will be an angel's choir.
"Blessed is my sister, Lila, for heaven is within her.
"Blessed are the rabble, for they shall know God.
"But woe upon you, for the evil of your own doings shall be visited upon you.
"Let my sister go! ~ Randy Attwood

I was born in Paris. My parents came here from Tunisia when they were kids, but we're still foreigners. Arabs. Africans. Rabble. Scum. We're what's wrong with this country and we always will be. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

The noble gases, which reside on the East Coast of the periodic table, are its aristocrats - detached and aloof, never bothering to interact with the rabble of common elements that make up the vast majority of the world. ~ Sam Kean

Home, home - a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease and smells. ~ Aldous Huxley

What relationship could exist between the lives of the fools and healthy rabble who were well, who slept well, who performed the sexual act well, who had never felt the wings of death on their face every moment-what relationship could exist between them and one like me who has arrived at the end of his rope and who knows that he will pass away gradually and tragically? ~ Sadegh Hedayat

There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies. ~ Thomas Browne

There are perhaps more of the qualities that matter among the ignorant then among the learned. But again, what a vile thing the rabble is! ~ Virginia Woolf

Hipsters seek refuge in church, Our Lady of Perpetual Subculture. There is some discussion as to whether or not they are still cool but then they are calmed by the obscure location and the arrival of their kind. Keep the address to yourself, let the rabble fund it themselves. Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel no so terrible about my various emotional issues. ~ Colson Whitehead

And what the people but a herd confus'd,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and, well weigh'd, scarce worth the praise?
They praise, and they admire, they know not what;
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extoll'd,
To live upon their tongues, and be their talk,
Of whom to be disprais'd were no small praise? ~ John Milton

Finally, by making activism our priority, we fashion a reputation as rabble-rousing malcontents and foster hostility toward unbelievers that alienates us from them, and them from us. We need to let go of the notion that culture and ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

For a moment his rage was so great that he literally could not speak. The blood beat loudly in his ears. It was like getting a call from some twentieth-century Medici prince ... no portraits of my family with their warts showing, please, or back to the rabble you'll go. I subsidize no pictures but pretty pictures. ~ Stephen King

Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kings watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself.

Well, the rabble could. The rabble would.

He would lead the rabble in managing.

The thing would be won. ~ George Saunders

Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory. ~ John Taylor Gatto

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse. ~ Walter Savage Landor

The Army had your soul, once you'd been in it all those years - there were things you couldn't shake off so easy, because they'd gone deep into you, and it was painful when they came out, because of the roots they'd grown, right deep down in your guts.
Name and number? Watson, 606. Smarten up there, Private Watson! You're a soldier now, you know, not a bloody jelly fish! Get that salute right, private! Sir! Sir! Sir! Corporal, what's your unit? Corporal Watson, dress that man! You are in charge of this rabble, Corp'l Watson? Sir! Report to my quarters, Sarnt Watson, oh six hundred hours! You should know better than that, Sergeant - now get those men in order! Sir! Sir! Sir!
Hold, Watty. ~ Elleston Trevor

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men ~ Charlton Heston

Maybe all hospitals should import groups of rabble-rousing punk rockers to kick-start the languishing patients' hearts. ~ Gayle Forman

I've had enough of organizations for a while, no matter how good the cause. I prefer being a free-agent rabble-rouser. Dan ~ Neal Shusterman

Racath's eyebrows drew together. "Terms?"
"Yes, terms," Briz'nar replied, a forked tongue dancing behind its sharkish teeth. "Conditions for the riots to cease. The rabble must have some sort of price if they are sending one of your kind to do the bargaining. What is it, then? Coin? Food? Perhaps a much needed bath?" Some of the Arkûl chuckled.
Racath rolled his eyes. "I'm not here to negotiate with anyone!" he answered incredulously. "The only terms I have are that you die, this Bridge is destroyed, and the Dominion never even thinks about looking at the Burrows ever again. ~ S.G. Night

The lion snorted. 'You treat all as a game. That is why they sent for me - Malcador cannot trust you. No one can trust you. Your Legion is a rabble that would brawl among themselves if you were not there to smack their heads together.' 'If only they were more like yours,' said Russ, mockingly. 'Yes,' replied the Lion, exasperated. 'Yes. Is that so hard to imagine?'

Russ loosened his arms, letting Krakenmaw swing lazily before him. 'I know why you do this. I know why you conquer, world after world, driving your sons after every campaign Malcador finds for you. But our father won't do it, brother. He won't choose a favourite. And if He did, it wouldn't be you - it would be Sanguinius, or Rogal, or Horus. So you're wasting yourself, trying to be noticed. It doesn't work like that.'

The Lion let slip a scornful laugh. 'Not all of us are so without friends in the Palace, Leman, and you have no idea who our father favours. ~ Chris Wraight

The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers. A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind. A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals. ~ Aldous Huxley

In The Knights Aristophanes gave us a picture of the final state of corruption in which the vulgar rabble ends when
just as in Tibet they worship the Dalai Lama's excrement
they contemplate their own scum in its representatives; and that, in a democracy, is a degree of corruption comparable to auctioning the crown in a monarchy. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy.. a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose. ~ H.L. Mencken

Blest who was youthful in his youth;
blest who matured at the right time;
who gradually the chill of life
with years was able to withstand;
who never was addicted to strange dreams;
who did not shun the fahsinable rabble;
who was at twenty fop or blade,
and then at thirty, profitably married;
who rid himself at fifty
of private and of other debts;
who fame, money, and rank
in due course calmly gained;
about whom lifelong one kept saying:
N. N. is an excellent man.

But it is sad to think that to no purpose
youth was given us,
that we betrayed it every hour,
that it duped us;
that our best wishes,
that our fresh dreamings,
in quick succession have decayed
like leaves in putrid autumn.
It is unbearable to see before one
only of dinners a long series,
to look on life as on a rite,
and in the wake of the decorous crowd
to go, not sharing with it
either general views, or passions. ~ Alexander Pushkin

In my opinion, only bakers need to work early in the morning. And the Gestapo, of course - that is self-evident. To tear the Bolshevist rabble from their beds, so long as they are not Bolshevist bakers. For they would already be awake, and thus the Gestapo, for their part, would have to get up even earlier, and so on and so forth. ~ Timur Vermes

We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the East ... The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz-Yisrael ... [Muslims are] yelling rabble dressed up in gaudy, savage rags. ~ Ze'ev Jabotinsky

Nothing flows from her, vile rabble. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I'd have found it amusing enough, I dare say, if I hadn't been irritated by the thought that these irresponsible Christian zealots were only making things harder for the Army and Company, who had important work to do. It was all so foolish and unnecessary - the heathen creeds, for all their nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, were as good as any for keeping the rabble in order, and what else is religion for? In ~ George MacDonald Fraser

I saw that pain and disease existed and at the same time that they were void of sense and meaning. Among the men of the rabble I had become a creature of a strange, unknown race, so much so that they had forgotten that I had once been part of their world. I had the dreadful sensation that I was not really alive or wholly dead. I was a living corpse, unrelated to the world of living people and at the same time deprived of the oblivion and peace of death. ~ Sadegh Hedayat

Whenever any black man in america shows signs of an uncompromising attitude, against the injustices that he experiences daily, and shows no tendency whatsoever to compromise with it, then the American press [characterizes him] as a radical, as an extremist someone who's irresponsible, or as a rabble rouser or someone who doesn't rationalize in dealing with the problem. ~ Malcolm X

I like Michael Moore, but I think of him more as a rabble-rouser. On his TV show, when he went to the home of the guy who invented the car alarm and set off all the car alarms on the block ... pretty funny. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The satisfaction we take from performing a task (especially when we have no belief in the task and even disdain it) shows to what degree we still belong to the rabble. ~ Emil M. Cioran

A few old men might cling to their mitres and mumble their prayers, but they were a dying breed. It was men like Borgia who were the Church now. They had transformed it into a mimers' play filled with posturing and pretense, a performance to distract the rabble while they went about their worldly business out of sight.
Where was the sheperd to stand against such wolves? ~ Sara Poole

The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Every campus, of course, also has its rabble of young "liberals," who are forever making a din as they "demonstrate" for "world peash," "snivel rights," and the like, and who, if we may judge from their appearance and their yammering, are as afraid of war as they are of soap. I am sure that every student here present fully understands the importance of staying on the good side of the young "intellectuals"
I mean the windward side, of course. ~ Revilo P. Oliver

We need to bring out the rabble-rousing nature of people. We are gonna need un-repression. We need hundreds of people farting up a storm. We need a big-time, old-fashioned, furious, fart storm. ~ Allan Dare Pearce

Another Kilgore Trout book there in the window was about a man who built a time machine so he could go back and see Jesus. It worked, and he saw Jesus when Jesus was only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.
Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device they wanted built by sunrise the next morning. It was a cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser.
Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was executed on it. So it goes. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The Garden
En robe de parade.
- Samain
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anaemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion. ~ Ezra Pound

Dozens of members of Congress will be retiring next month, and some should be missed. But there is only one Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma senator the Christian Science Monitor has dubbed 'a rabble-rousing statesman.' ~ John Fund

Just as, all too often, some huge crowd is seized by a vast uprising, the rabble runs amok, all slaves to passion, rocks, firebrands flying. Rage finds them arms but then, if they chance to see a man among them, one whose devotion and public service lend him weight, they stand there, stock-still with their ears alert as he rules their furor with words and calms their passion. ~ Virgil

I had many times reflected on the fact of death and on the decomposition of the component parts of my body, so that this idea had ceased to frighten me. On the contrary, I genuinely longed to pass into oblivion and non-being. The only thing I feared was that the atoms of my body should later go to make up the bodies of rabble-men. This thought was unbearable to me. There were times when I wished I could be endowed after death with large hands with long, sensitive fingers: I would carefully collect together all the atoms of my body and hold them tightly in my hands to prevent them, my property, from passing into the bodies of rabble-men. ~ Sadegh Hedayat

Control the coinage and the courts - let the rabble have the rest. ~ Frank Herbert

I cannot tell you ... my little one. No man can tell you. No ... I cannot answer you, for nothing I could say would be the truth. The truth is beyond us, and is not in us. We go forward in faith. That is all.
Nobody can tell us why the Son of Man had to go. He was Prince of Light. He could have ruled the world. But He was crucified, and when men would have fought for Him, He told them to put up their swords. He allowed a rabble to crucify Him. Why did He die in that way when He could have chosen any? To save us, we know. But why did He die in only that way? It was ordained? Then dare we say that Dilys was ordained to die as she did? ~ Richard Llewellyn

I hate the irreverent rabble and keep them far from me. ~ Horace

I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent stock-market crash, where they lost several million dollars, a rabble of dead money that went sliding off into the sea. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Ah?" he said, vaguely. "No, I dinna think so. Still," he said with a smile, pulling his attention suddenly back to her, "I wouldna be likely to. A young burke of sixteen's too taken up wi' his own grand self to pay much heed to what he thinks are naught but a rabble of snot-nosed bairns. ~ Diana Gabaldon