A mob is a society obodies, voluntarily bereaving themselves oreason, and traversing its work. The mob is man, voluntarily descending to the nature othe beast. Its fit hour oactivity is night; its actions are insane, like its whole constitution.
Interpretation
The quote describes how a mob represents a collective surrender of reason, leading to chaotic and irrational behavior.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote illustrates the darker aspects of collective human behavior, where individuals in a mob lose their sense of reason and morality. He suggests that in a mob, people willingly abandon their rationality, descending into primal instincts, which manifest in irrational and often violent actions. Emerson warns that the mob operates most actively in the cover of night, symbolizing the anonymity and recklessness that accompany such behavior, reflecting a profound critique of unchecked group dynamics in society.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the dangers of groupthink in political movements.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Pride is the utter poverty of soul disguised as riches, imaginary light where in fact there is darkness.
It's amazing what storms your face can hide, what terrible wrecks can writhe and heave beneath, without one ripple on the surface.
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
While he was in the service, in the South and in Oklahoma, he was refused service at a couple of places where he was in uniform, and was told that African Americans, blacks, Negros, were not served. And in spite of that, I've never known a man who loved this country more than my father did.
Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it–how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren’t adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.
Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.