Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
The explanation I was given many years ago is that многие люди more clearly emphasizes that the crowd of people is made up of individuals (thus the example already given that perhaps some of them like ice cream and some of them don't), while много людей is more about "how many square meters of floor-space do they occupy" (it considers the people as a monolithic mass).
Yeah, it has that shade, like, when you say "много людей" it is more "many, lots of people" and "многие люди" is "all kinds of people, quite a number". "Многие" is much more often used when you need to say something like "Many people like/do/think something", though you can also use "много". Besides, with "многие" you don't need "люди": it can do without this ("Many are responsible for this" - the same in English).
If you need "many of the ...", only "многие" works without rephrasing: "Многие из нас остались" = "Many of us have remained". You can, of course, say something like "Много из нас осталось", but er.. not as good, and grammatically it is more like "Of all of us, many have remained"