The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs.
Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? No - no, your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.
What will happen to the spirit of this ancient dreaming land without the great mobs of kangaroos bounding across the song lines, energizing the land? Will the sunset and dawn mourn the passing of the creatures who danced in their light?
Everything that gives pleasure has its reason. To scorn the mobs of those who go astray is not the means to bring them around.
Mobs in their emotions are much like children, subject to the same tantrums and fits of fury.
Hackberry Holland's greatest fear was his fellow man's propensity to act collectively, in militaristic lockstep, under the banner of God and country. Mobs did not rush across town to do good deeds, and in Hackberry's view, there was no more odious taint on any social or political endeavor than universal approval.
I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men's rights are nothing more. Women's rights are nothing less.
Governments oppress people, but so do mobs. You need to avoid both to make progress.
Mobs have passions, not brains.
The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.
Markets as well as mobs respond to human emotions; markets as well as mobs can be inflamed to their own destruction.
Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites.
Lynch mobs are democracies.
