Perhaps this general degradation was the result of too much crowding, too little privacy, too much noise. You couldn't be decent if you weren't intelligent; you couldn't be intelligent if you couldn't think—and who could think in all this racket? Add the stench to the confusion of cramped quarters, and who could be self-respecting?

It is more difficult to undermine faith than knowledge, love succumbs to change less than to respect, hatred is more durable than aversion, and at all times the driving force of the most important changes in this world has been found less in a scientific knowledge animating the masses, but rather in a fanaticism dominating them and in a hysteria which drove them forward.

Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.

I think one can tell a lot about a person from the way he chooses to let the stub of his cigarette burn out...

In the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving.

The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.

As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.

I thought I was getting away from politics for a while. But I now realise that the vuvuzela is to these World Cup blogs what Julius Malema is to my politics columns: a noisy, but sadly unavoidable irritant. With both Malema and the vuvuzela, their importance is far overstated. Malema: South Africa's Robert Mugabe? I think not. The vuvuzela: an archetypal symbol of 'African culture?' For African civilisation's sake, I seriously hope not.Both are getting far too much airtime than they deserve. Both have thrust themselves on to the world stage through a combination of hot air and raucous bluster. Both amuse and enervate in roughly equal measure. And both are equally harmless in and of themselves — though in Malema's case, it is the political tendency that he represents, and the right-wing interests that lie behind his diatribes that is dangerous. With the vuvu I doubt if there are such nefarious interests behind the scenes; it may upset the delicate ears of the middle classes, both here and at the BBC, but I suspect that South Africa's democracy will not be imperilled by a mass-produced plastic horn.

I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.

I miss being in Barbados in December,That is a time I always remember,The smell of varnish on the wooden floors,And the smell of paint on the wooden doorsThe crowds in de Supermarket,Buying up the rum,And the music blastingPuh rup a pum pum

She had forgotten about this, the narcotic of the crowd. This is why you came to hear music. To stop being yourself, to let that thing that you supposedly were go, and just be part of a mob, synchronized by the heavy beat, mesmerized by a singer with big smeary red lips, her spooky chant.

It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.

Every command leaves behind a painful sting in the person who is forced to carry it out.

I wouldn't live in a colony like that, myself, for a thousand dollars an hour. I wouldn't want it next door. I'm not too happy it's within ten miles. Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both history and human nature. Because they'd spoil my thing with their thing. Because I don't think any of them is wise enough to play God and create a human society. Look. I like privacy, I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like anarchy, I don't even like discussion all that much. I prefer study, which is very different from meditation-not better, different. I don't like children who are part of the wild life. So are polecats and rats and other sorts of hostile and untrained vermin. I want to make a distinction between civilization and the wild life. I want a society that will protect the wild life without confusing itself with it.

And this that you call solitude is in fact a big crowd.

When there is noise and crowds, there is trouble; When everything is silent and perfect, There is just perfection and nothing To fill the air.

i often sit and wonderi often sit and dreami often sit and waitfor the one that’s just for me i search the many facesin the crowds of people i see exploring, seeking,looking for, the one that it could be.is it Mister Blue Collar? is it Mister Too Clean? is it Mister Holy Onewhich was made for me? then i stop and thinkof the biggest catastrophe -what if this man i’m waiting fordoesn’t even recognize me?-LostInACrowd

Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you, when you walk in a crowd.

An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely.

A group experience takes place on a lower level of consciousness than the experience of an individual. This is due to the fact that, when many people gather together to share one common emotion, the total psyche emerging from the group is below the level of the individual psyche. If it is a very large group, the collective psyche will be more like the psyche of an animal, which is the reason why the ethical attitude of large organizations is always doubtful. The psychology of a large crowd inevitably sinks to the level of mob psychology. If, therefore, I have a so-called collective experience as a member of a group, it takes place on a lower level of consciousness than if I had the experience by myself alone.

Crowds don’t think; they act; they don’t produce ideas, they produce actions!

One thinking man in a crowd worth a thousand men!

When you want to be alone, even few people around you will seem like a tremendous crowd to you!

Nobody ever goes to that store to shop because it’s too crowded.

What I couldn’t bring myself to hate was the energy. I reveled in the way it ebbed and flowed as people connected over something and the way the multiplication of people intensified it around us. Energy made me both love and hate being in large crowds because there was too much chaos to the peace and too much peace to the chaos.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.

Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future..

It's idealistic, it's for love and gentleness, it's close to nature, it hurts nobody, it's voluntary. I can't see anything wrong with any of that.''Neither can I. The only trouble is, this commune will be inhabited by and surrounded by members of the human race.

If you want to win, drop the past trends. Genius creates new trends and the crowd follows the past.

A civilization, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long. Could anything postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be precisely the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their growing indifference and lack of respect for all general beliefs.

It’s relatively easy to act nice and normal in front of a crowd, or in public. The tricky part is doing it in private.

Crowds most envy the lonely man who walks confidently as if he is walking with the great crowds!

People are very busy; they are so busy that when they walk in the crowds they see no one, no one but themselves; they hear no voice, no voice but their own voice!

In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

The mob has many heads but no brains.

A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because looked at through the myth all evidence supports that myth.

Insanity in individuals is rare - but in groups parties nations and epochs it is the rule.

When a hundred men stand together each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

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

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.

Every crowd has a silver lining.

And I was a Child again, watching the bright World. But the Spell broke when at this Juncture some Gallants jumped from the Pitt onto the Stage and behaved as so many Merry-Andrews among the Actors, which reduced all to Confusion. I laugh'd with them also, for I like to make Merry among the Fallen and there is pleasure to be had in the Observation of the Deformity of Things. Thus when the Play resumed after the Disturbance, it was only to excite my Ridicule with its painted Fictions, wicked Hypocrisies and villainous Customs, all depicted with a little pert Jingle of Words and a rambling kind of Mirth to make the Insipidnesse and Sterility pass. There was no pleasure in seeing it, and nothing to burden the Memory after: like a voluntarie before a Lesson it was absolutely forgotten, nothing to be remembered or repeated.