A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

Henry David Thoreau

Quote Topics

Best Contrary Itself Level Lowest Mass Member Never On The Contrary Standard Up

Quote Author

Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

I expect the audience to come up to my level. I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

Don Ellis

People always try to be perfect. That's why they don't start anything. Perfection is the lowest standard in the world. Because if you're trying to be perfect, you know you can't be. So what you really have is a standard you can never achieve. You want to be outstanding, not perfect.

Tony Robbins

Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself good or ill based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.

Alvin Toffler

Despite massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their romantic concept of capitalism, which, freed from government interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the lowest prices.

Paul Craig Roberts

The deal is that I hold myself to an extremely high standard, and it's a standard that can never be... it's unattainable. But it drives me to be the very best in everything I do.

Bill Goldberg

There may be some backward countries where the mass of the people are on a subsistence level and where, as an aftermath of wars or partial crop failures, the standard of living has to be drastically reduced, but this certainly is not the case in our prosperous nations.

Charles E. Wilson

Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard.

Thomas B. Macaulay

The here, the now, and the individual, have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet, and - from time immemorial - the woman. In the small circle of the home she has never quite forgotten the particular uniqueness of each member of the family; the spontaneity of now; the vividness of here. This is the basic substance of life. These are the individual elements that form the bigger entities like mass, future, world. We may neglect these elements, but we cannot dispense with them. They are the drops that make up the stream. They are the essence of life itself.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.

Irenaeus of Lyons

The decision to give an indicative date for a return is a mistake. It degrades the process. It degrades human life.

David Trimble

Whether or not the standard of living made possible by mass production and in turn by mass circulation, is supported by and filled with the work of us hucksters, I guess is something that only history can decide.

Leo Burnett

Congress shall also create a tax code weighing more than the combined poundage of the largest member of the House and the largest member of the Senate, plus a standard musk ox.

Dave Barry

I started in the lowest league in baseball, and I worked my way all the way up to Triple A and then to the big leagues. I never reached the level that I thought I would reach as a player. But that's the way it goes. So then I started from the bottom as a manager, and I worked my way up to managing the Dodgers for 20 years.