68 Quotes by Gustave Le Bon

The characteristics of the reasoning of crowds are the association of dissimilar things possessing a merely apparent connection between each other, and the immediate generalisation of particular cases. It is arguments of this kind that are always presented to crowds by those who know how to manage them.

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

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

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.

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

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

Muhammad is the greatest man that history ever knew.

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

Two fundamental factors are at the base of this transformation. The first is the destruction of those religious, political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilisation are rooted. The second is the creation of entirely new conditions of existence and thought as the result of modern scientific and industrial discoveries.