What will happen once the authentic mass man takes over, we do not know yet, although it may be a fair guess that he will have more in common with the meticulous, calculated correctness of Himmler than with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stubborn dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin.
~ Hannah Arendt

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.
~ Walter Benjamin

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
~ Georges Bernanos

The only freedom supposed to be left to the masses is that of grazing on the ration of simulacra the system distributes to each individual.
~ Michel De Certeau

The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise.
~ Marcus T. Cicero

The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that they are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.
~ Cyril Connolly

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
~ Denis Diderot

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.
~ Epicurus

The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the cafT.
~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child.
~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.
~ Vaclav Havel

There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before.
~ Eric Hoffer

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.
~ Carl Jung

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
~ John Stuart Mill

The multitude is always wrong.
~ Proverb

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.
~ Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.
~ Seneca