Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously.
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one.
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.
The ill-informed masses included her own family among their ranks, a family that specialized in being both inconvenient and asinine.
War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.