Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit. 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
  Letter to Charlemagne.

Os guerreiros de ca¤   na‹  o buscam mavo¤  rticas damas para o enlace epitala"  mico; mas antes as preferem do¤  ceis e facilmente troca¤ v eis por pequeninas e vola¤  teis folhas de papel a que o vulgo chamara¤   dinheiroöo 'curriculum vitae'da Civiliza c° a‹  o. The warriors here do not seek out mettlesome women for epithalamic conjunction, but prefer them docile and willing to exchange with ease their favours for those small and deliquescent leaves of paper which the masses call moneyöthe curriculum vitae of Civilization.

-Andrade, Ma¤ r io de
  Macuna|¤  ma (O Hero¤  i sem nenhum cara¤  ter) (Macunaima, 1984), ch.9.

   Therearetwo ideas of government.Therearethose who believethat, if you will only legislatetomakethewell-to- do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislateto make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

-Bryan,WilliamJennings
  Speech at the Democratic National Convention,10  Jul.

Wealth has more and more increased, and at the same time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor.

-Carlyle,Thomas
  Signs of the Times.

Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes! Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow ye masses!

-Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)
  Chorus, Iolanthe, act1 (first performed 25 Nov, simultaneously in London and NewYork).

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

-Gladstone,W(illiam) E(wart)
  Speech, Liverpool, 28  Jun.

The art of the masses.

-Hall,J(oyce) C(lyde)
Of illustrated greetings cards. Recalled on his death, quoted in The Annual Obituary 82 (1983).

Carving is interrelated masses conveying an emotion: a perfect relationship between the mind and the colour, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels.

-Hepworth, Dame Barbara
  Unit One.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

-Lazarus, Emma
  'The New Colossus', inscribed at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, NewYork harbour,1886.

A small, compact core, consisting of reliable, experienced and hardened workers, with responsible agents†connected byall therules of strict secrecy with the organisations of revolutionists, can, with the wide support of the masses and without an elaborate set of rules, perform all the functions of a trade union.

-Lenin,Vladimir Ilyich originally Vladimir IlyichUlyanov
  What Is to be Done?

No one in this world, so far as I knowöand I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help meöhas ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

-Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis)
  'Notes on  Journalism' in the Chicago Sunday Tribune,19 Sep. The phrase is commonly quoted as'No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the  American people.'

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

-Osler, Sir William
Collected in W B Bean (ed) Sir William Osler:  Aphorisms from His Bedside Teachings and Writings (1950).

I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from 'em by calling 'em the masses and then you accuse 'em of not having any faces.

-Priestley,J(ohn) B(oynton)
Saturn Over theWater, ch.2.

We can applaud the state lottery as a public subsidy of intelligence, for it yields public income that is calculated to lighten the tax burden of us prudent abstainers at the expense of the benighted masses of wishful thinkers.

-Quine,Willard Van Orman
  Quiddities,'Gambling'.

In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when everyact of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.

-Reed,John
  Ten DaysThat Shook theWorld, ch.3.

Les masses ont tort et les individus toujours raison. The masses are wrong; individuals are always right.

-Vian, Boris
  L'EŁ   cume des jours.