Quotes by
Gustave Le Bon |
1841-1931 , French polymath & writer
Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon was a French scientist, physician, and philosopher. whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics.He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology.
| 23 quotes | 146 visits |
Quotations
| • | In group efforts there is a reckless tendency for consensus and collective misunderstanding of serious issues, within a climate of cheerful camaraderie. 2 |
| • | The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. 2 |
| • | The sense of responsibility, which always controls individuals, is lost in a crowd. 1 |
| • | For many people, speaking precedes thinking. They only know what they are thinking after they have heard what they have said. 1 |
| • | Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them. 1 |
| • | Ideas age faster than words. |
| • | Genius cannot be prudent. If it acts prudently, it will never be able to expand the sphere of human progress. |
| • | Man thinks in aphorisms. |
| • | There are countless people who never have an opinion different from that of their newspaper. |
| • | Let us leave to the false orators the vain speeches about pacifism, brotherhood and other illusions, which bring to mind the theological discussions of the Byzantines at the time when Muhammad invaded their walls. |
| • | The true artist creates even when he copies. |
| • | Because pleasure is fleeting while desire is lasting, people are more often motivated by desire than by pleasure. |
| • | The thirst for equality is usually nothing more than an acceptable form of the desire to have inferiors, but not superiors. |
| • | The mob can only think in images and therefore can only be influenced by images. Only images can terrify or excite them and thus become motivations for action. |
| • | It is more valuable to understand than to learn. |
| • | To dominate people, it is easier to inflame their passions than to support their interests. |
| • | The weaker the government, the stronger the bureaucracy. |
| • | Debase the character of soldiers and you will have nothing but the mobs of Xerxes. Exalt the character, and you will have the warriors of Alexander. |
| • | The art of those who govern consists above all in the science of employing words. |
| • | If atheism spread, it would become a religion as intolerable as the ancient ones. |
| • | One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it. |
| • | All the civilizations we know have been created and directed by small intellectual aristocracies, never by people in the mass. The power of crowds is only to destroy. |
| • | The role of the scholar is to destroy chimeras, that of the statesman is to make use of them. |
