Gustave Le Bon Quotes

#1. 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.

Gustave Le Bon

#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.

Gustave Le Bon

#3. Instead of preparing men for life French schools solely prepare them to occupy public functions, in which success can be attained without any necessity for
self-direction or the exhibition of the least glimmer of personal initiative.

Gustave Le Bon

#4. Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardor of a religious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult.

Gustave Le Bon

#5. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian - that is, a creature acting by instinct.

Gustave Le Bon

#6. It is time in particular that prepares the opinions and beliefs of crowds, or at least the soil on which they will germinate.

Gustave Le Bon

#7. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest.

Gustave Le Bon

#8. The role of the scholar is to destroy chimeras, that of the statesman is to make use of them.

Gustave Le Bon

#9. Science promised us truth, or at least a knowledge of such relations as our intelligence can seize: it never promised us peace or happiness.

Gustave Le Bon

#10. Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects. The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely regulated by their prestige.

Gustave Le Bon

#11. The art of those who govern consists above all in the science of employing words.

Gustave Le Bon

#12. Acquired or artificial prestige is much the most common. The mere fact that an individual occupies a certain position, possesses a certain fortune, or bears certain titles, endows him with prestige, however slight his own personal worth.

Gustave Le Bon

#13. From the intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great mathematician and his boot maker, but from the point of view of character the difference is most often slight or non-existent

Gustave Le Bon

#14. In the case of everything that belongs to the realm of sentiment, religion, politics, morality, the affections, and antipathies, etc. The most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals.

Gustave Le Bon

#15. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated.

Gustave Le Bon

#16. The explanation is that their science is only a very attenuated form of our universal ignorance.

Gustave Le Bon

#17. The conscious life of the mind is of small importance in comparison with its unconscious life.

Gustave Le Bon

#18. For the rival candidate, an effort must be made to destroy his chance by establishing by dint of affirmation, repetition, and contagion that he is an arrant scoundrel, and that it is a matter of common knowledge that he has been guilty of several crimes.

Gustave Le Bon

#19. The influence of the leaders is due in very small measure to the arguments they employ, but in a large degree to their prestige. The best proof of this is that, should they by any circumstance lose their prestige, their influence disappears.

Gustave Le Bon

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

Gustave Le Bon

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

Gustave Le Bon

#22. A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions.

Gustave Le Bon

#23. The ideas of the past, although half destroyed, being still very powerful, and the ideas which are to replace them being still in process of formation, the modern age represents a period of transition and anarchy.

Gustave Le Bon

#24. The only real tyrants that humanity has known have always been the memories of its dead or the illusions it has forged itself.

Gustave Le Bon

#25. The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that calls them up.

Gustave Le Bon

#26. If atheism spread, it would become a religion as intolerable as the ancient ones.

Gustave Le Bon

#27. The tyranny exercised unconsciously on men's minds is the only real tyranny, because it cannot be fought against.

Gustave Le Bon

#28. The work of a crowd is always inferior, whatever its nature, to that of an isolated individual.

Gustave Le Bon

#29. The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought.

Gustave Le Bon

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

Gustave Le Bon

#31. 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 time undertake the charge of elaborating constitutions when we are wise enough to allow these two factors to act

Gustave Le Bon

#32. 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.

Gustave Le Bon

#33. The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation.

Gustave Le Bon

#34. Sentiment has never been vanquished in its eternal conflict with reason

Gustave Le Bon

#35. The precise moment at which a great belief is doomed is easily recognizable; it is the moment when its value begins to be called into question.

Gustave Le Bon

#36. The CASTE represents the highest degree of organisation of which the crowd is susceptible.

Gustave Le Bon

#37. From the primary school till he leaves the
university a young man does nothing but acquire books by heart without his
judgment or personal initiative being ever called into play.

Gustave Le Bon

#38. A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realisation of its desire.

Gustave Le Bon

#39. This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence.

Gustave Le Bon

#40. 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

#41. Muhammad is the greatest man that history ever knew

Gustave Le Bon