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?
Call it no more free-will, but slavish lust; free to evil, but free from good, till regenerating grace loosens the bands of wickedness.
Daily, I examine myself in three areas. Have I done my best when doing things for others? Have I been trustworthy in my dealings with my friends? Have I revised the lessons I have been taught?
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
Nothing will make me change my principles. Even with the knife at my neck I shall still declare, up to this day, the poor have done everything; it is time for the rich to take their turn... The selfish people, the young idlers, must be made useful, whether they like it or not, and some respite be procured for the useful and respectable worker.
Any judgment is past oriented, and existence is always herenow, life is always herenow. All judgments are coming from your past experiences, your education, your religion, your parents - which may be dead, but their judgments are being carried by your mind and they will be given as a heritage to your children. Generation after generation, every disease is being transferred as a heritage. Only a non-judgmental mind has intelligence, because it is spontaneously responding to reality.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
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