Crowds are influenced mainly by images produced by the judicious employment of words and formulas

Crowds are influenced mainly by images produced by the judicious employment of words and formulas

The beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief.

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.

Science has promised us truth...It has never promised us either peace or happiness.

The precise moment at which a great belief is doomed is easily recognisable; it is the moment when its value begins to be called in question.

At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves against the East; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and the hallucinated create history.