Mob is a word which can designate any large gathering of people, including flash mobs intent on amusing displays of coordinated activity, but often refers to mobbing behavior in which people "gang up", to intimidate, bully or oppress others without regard to their human rights or dignity. Some organized criminal gangs are often referred to as "the Mob."

The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones. - Stanisław Jerzy Lec.
See also:
Groupthink · Herd mentality · Masses · Ochlocracy ·

Quotes

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National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like, the first obey a mob, always demented and the second a king, generally sane. ~ J. F. C. Fuller.
 
The thing that's really cool for me about Miami Beach is you have this dichotomy between sunlight and family and happiness and innocence and then at night, darker, stranger mob conspiracy stuff sort of comes out. It seems like a storytelling engine. You can just keep writing about how those two worlds smash into each other. ~ Mitch Glazer.
 
Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand. ~ Frederick the Great.
 
When I met Elvis, we didn't really have a conversation. I was introduced by my uncle, and he sort of grunted my way. What stays with me is the whole scene. I had never seen a real mob scene before. I was really young and impressionable. Elvis really did look - he looked sort of not real, as if he were glowing. ~ Tom Petty.
 
The largest mass lynching in American history involved the lynching of eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans in 1891. Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob... ~ Ida B. Wells
  • Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
    • And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.
    • Variant translation: We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness.
    • Alcuin, Works, Epistle 127 (to Charlemagne, AD 800)
  • The history of persecution is a history of endeavours to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these.
  • The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
  • I honor the man who is willing to sink
    Half his present repute for the freedom to think
    ,
    And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
    Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak,
    Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,
    Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.
  • A hungry mob is an angry mob.
  • Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.
    • Novalis Blüthenstaub (1798), Fragment No. 95
  • Each time we gather to inaugurate a President we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this Nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional—what makes us American—is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they've never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a republic, a government of and by and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed. And for more than 200 years, we have.
  • When I met Elvis, we didn't really have a conversation. I was introduced by my uncle, and he sort of grunted my way. What stays with me is the whole scene. I had never seen a real mob scene before. I was really young and impressionable. Elvis really did look - he looked sort of not real, as if he were glowing.
  • Every time the Mob puts the pressure on a good man, tries to stop him from doing his duty as a citizen, it's a crucifixion. And anybody who sits around and lets it happen, keeps silent about something he knows that happened, shares the guilt of it just as much as the Roman soldier who pierced the flesh of our Lord to see if he was dead...Boys, this is my church! And if you don't think Christ is down here on the waterfront, you've got another guess coming!
  • Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool calculating deliberation of an intelligent people who openly avow that there is an “unwritten law” that justifies them in putting to death without complain under oath, without trial by jury , without opportunity to make defence, without right of appeal
  • We have been entertained with a great variety of phrases, to avoid calling this sort of people a mob. Some call them shavers, some call them geniuses. The plain English is, gentlemen, most probably a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars.
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