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There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.

 

Michel de Montaigne

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Nothing is so catching as the plague; now, fanaticism, no matter of what nature, is only the plague of the human mind.

 

Giacomo (Jacques Casanova de Seingal) Casanova

 

I was about to say, 'Avoid fame like the plague,' but you know, they can cure the plague with penicillin these days.

 

Larry Wall

 

But if this is good in itself it is infinitely more important, in my opinion, as a sign of that new spirit which is passing from municipal into Imperial politics, which aims more at the improvement of the lot of the worker and the toiler than at those great constitutional effects in which past Parliaments have taken as their pride. To what do you attribute that spirit? I attribute it to two things. In the first place, I believe as England has been governed under various suffrages for the benefit of various sections, that now the suffrage has been made accessible to all it is about to be governed for all. (Cheers.) in the next place, I believe in the further course of the lowering of that suffrage we somewhere or other lit upon the conscience of the community. I believe that at last the community has awoke to its liabilities and duties to all ranks and classes. And I believe the people are now inclined to think that politics is not merely a game at which the pawns have to be sacrificed to the knights and castles (cheers), but is an elevating and ennobling effort to carry into practical politics and practical life the principles of a higher morality. I believe that increasingly Governments will be judged by that test. I believe the people are coming to recognize that in that spirit alone must Governments be carried on. It is all very well to make great speeches and to win great divisions. It is well to speak with authority in the councils of the world and to see your navies riding on every sea, and to see your flag on every shore. That is well, but it is not all. I am certain that there is a party in this country not named as yet that is disconnected with any existing political organization, a party which is inclined to say, "A plague on both your Houses, a plague on all your parties, a plague on all your politics, a plague on your ending discussions which yield so little fruit." (Cheers.) "Have done with this unending talk and come down and do something for the people." It is this spirit which animates, as I believe, the great masses of our artisans, the great masses of our working clergy, the great masses of those who work for and with the poor, and who for the want of a better word I am compelled to call by the bastard term of philanthropists.

 

Archibald Primrose Rosebery

 

One of the key topics, for me, is a study of the individual in relation to crowds and to power. A film essay on crowd psychology would avoid commentary (it has become the madness of secondary discourse in many documentaries) and rely wholly on sound and image. Ideally, it would try to provide us with new concepts on the nature of society, on violence, and on the political bestiality of our times that is linked to the way the media has become a plague of words and images stripped of substance. It is a plague infecting our lives and, as a consequence, the history of nations with all that is sensational, random, and confused.

 

Damian Pettigrew

 

You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

 

Thomas Paine