The role of the scholar is to destroy chimeras, that of the statesman is to make use of them. — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
“A civilization, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share
All the civilizations we know have been created and directed by small intellectual aristocracies, never by people in the mass. The power of crowds… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
“To the Jacobins of this epoch [the French Revolution], as well as to those of our times, this popular entity constitutes a superior personality possessing attributes peculiar to the gods of never having to answer for their actions and never making a mistake. Their wishes must be humbly acceded to. The people may kill, burn, ravage, commit the most frightening… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share
The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
“To lose time in the manufacture of cut-and-dried constitutions is, in consequence, a puerile task, the useless labour of an ignorant rhetorician. Necessity and… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
Are the worst enemies of society those who attack it or those who do not even give themselves the trouble of defending it? — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
“If one destroyed in museums and libraries, if one hurled down on the flagstones before the churches all the works and all the monuments of art that religions have inspired, what would remain of the great dreams of humanity? To give to men that portion of hope and illusion without which they cannot live, such is the reason for the… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share
“From the primary school till he leaves the university a young man does nothing but acquire books by heart without his judgment or personal… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
The precise moment at which a great belief is doomed is easily recognizable; it is the moment when its value begins to be called… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
“The work of a crowd is always inferior, whatever its nature, to that of an isolated individual.” — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
“Expressions such as infamous capital, vile exploiters, the admirable working man, the socialisation of wealth, &c., always produce the same effect, although already somewhat… — Gustave Le Bon Copy Share Image
