#2,865

The immigration of the peasant into the cities was less disastrous than that of the notable from the people.
Rural society, on the one hand, lost the structure of prestige that used to discipline it, and the notable, on the other, was transformed into an anonymous particle of the amorphous human mass.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 459

#2,660

When the tyrant is the anonymous law, modern man believes he is free.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,657

Where even the last vestige of feudal ties disappears, the increasing social isolation of the individual and his increasing helplessness fuse him into a totalitarian mass.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,654

It is not the vague notion of “service” that deserves respect, but the concrete notion of “servant.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 428

#2,639

The atomization of society derives from the modern division of labor: where nobody knows specifically for whom he works, nor who specifically works for him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 426

#2,549

An overpopulated country is one where every citizen is practically anonymous.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 409

#2,501

Eroticism and Gnosticism are the individual’s recourse against the anonymity of mass society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 402

#2,343

The anonymity of modern society obliges everyone to claim to be important.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 380

#2,241

Even small-town grudges are more civilized than the mutual indifference of big cities.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 364

#2,181

The bourgeoisie, in the feudal framework, settles in small urban centers where it becomes structured and civilized.
With the break-up of this framework, the bourgeoisie spreads across all of society, invents the nationalist state, rationalist technology, anonymous urban agglomerations, industrial society, the mass man, and finally the process in which society wavers between the despotism of the mob and the despotism of the expert.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 355

#1,535

The despotic decisions of the modern state are, in the end, made by an anonymous, subordinate, pusillanimous bureaucrat, who is probably also a cuckold.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 257

#1,473

That which impersonalizes degrades.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 248

#1,345

Modern man accepts any yoke, as long as the hand imposing it is impersonal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 231

#1,221

To be effective, the abuse of power presupposes the anonymity of the oppressor or the anonymity of the oppressed.
Despotisms fail when unmistakable faces confront each other.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 213

#845

With the object of preventing dangerous concentrations of economic power in the hands of a few anonymous associations, socialism proposes that the totality of economic power be entrusted in a lone anonymous association called the state.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 155

#694

The anonymity of the modern city is as intolerable as the familiarity of modern customs.
Life should resemble a salon of people with good manners, where all know each other but where none hug each other.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 126

#389

Modern man does not imagine any end higher than to serve the anonymous whims of his fellow citizens.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 80

#140

The cause of democracy’s stupidities is confidence in the anonymous citizen; and the cause of its crimes is the anonymous citizen’s confidence in himself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 43