History of Violence (2008)

“Such a crowd is a solemn test of man. It assembles as a witness to its common fate–within which personal differentiations have become unimportant. This fate has consisted, so far as its own memory is concerned, of continual deprivation and humiliation. Yet its appetites have not atrophied. A single pair of eyes, met in that crowd, are enough to reveal the extent of its possible demands. And most of these demands will be impossible to meet. Inevitably, the discrepancy will lead to violence: as inevitably as the crowd is inexorably there. It has assembled to demand the impossible.”G., John Berger