There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.
Interpretation
A mob can behave irrationally and cause trouble when not guided by purpose.
This quote by Herodotus suggests that when a group of people comes together without a clear purpose or constructive goal, they can become reckless and cause chaos. The 'useless mob' highlights how collective action can lead to foolishness and outrage when there is a lack of direction, illustrating the importance of thoughtful leadership and critical thinking in social movements.
In practice
During a discussion on social behavior, one can quote this to emphasize the risks of mindless group actions.
The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.
The man who has planned badly, if fortune is on his side, may have had a stroke of luck; but his plan was a bad one nonetheless.
Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
The worst pain a man can have is to know much and be impotent to act.
All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
The sad souls of those who lived without blame and without praise.
If we turn to the differences separating Communist, Fascist, and National Socialist regimes, we find that they can be accounted for by contrasting social, economic, and cultural condition in which the three had to operate. In other words, they resulted from tactical adaptation of the same philosophy of government to local circumstances, not from different philosophies.
Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.
So many things which once had distressed or revolted him β the speeches and pronouncements of the learned, their assertions and their prohibitions, their refusal to allow the universe to move β all seemed to him now merely ridiculous, non-existent, compared with the majestic reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness.
On Sunday 8 April 1945, he had just finished conducting a service of worship at Schoenberg, when two soldiers came took him away. As he left, he said to another prisoner, This is the end - but for me, the beginning - of life. He was hanged the next day, less than a week before the Allies reached the camp.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.