Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become a massive, sick Thing whose sheer weight is used ruthlessly by ambitious men. Here is the real enemy of the people: our own selves dehumanized into ''the masses.'' And where is the David who can slay this giant?
I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the masses. On this foundation it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.
If you see ninety-nine people running one way and three going the opposite, don't be too quick to join the majority.
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.
Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.
No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
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.
Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.
Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.
Take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.
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.
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.
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.
The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the cafT.
The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.
The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only — not from its privileged classes.
The mind of the people is like mud, from which arise strange and beautiful things.