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 mor...e 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The newspaper has debauched the American until he is a slavish, simpering, and angerless citizen; it has taught him to be a lump m...ass-man toward fraud, simony, murder, and lunacies more vile than those of Commodus or Caracalla.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his v...ital 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is almost impossible to be a doctor and an honest man, but it is obscenely impossible to be a psychiatrist without at the same ...time bearing the stamp of the most incontestable madness: that of being unable to resist that old atavistic reflex of the mass of humanity, which makes any man of science who is absorbed by this mass a kind of natural and inborn enemy of all genius.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief i...s not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour.... The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man,... and this standardization is called equality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 o...ne 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[F]rom Saratoga [N.Y.] till we got back to Northampton [Mass.], was then mostly desert. Now it is what 34. years of free and good ...government have made it. It shews how soon the labor of man would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object, the happiness of man, to the selfish interests of kings, nobles and priests.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »