Gustave Le Bon

Prestige is the mainspring of all authority. Neither gods, kings, nor women have ever reigned without it.

Respect for nobility is in their blood, so to speak, as with Spaniards the love of dancing, with Germans that of music, and with Frenchmen the liking for revolutions.

The special characteristic of prestige is to prevent us seeing things as they are and to entirely paralyse our judgment

Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects.

Genius cannot be prudent; by dint of prudence it could never enlarge the sphere of human activity.

Consciously or not, the being, the idea, or the thing possessing prestige is immediately imitated in consequence of contagion, and forces an entire generation to adopt certain modes of feeling and of giving expression to its thought.

Even revolutions can only avail when the belief has almost entirely lost its sway over men’s minds. In that case revolutions serve to finally sweep away what had already been almost cast aside, though the force of habit prevented its complete abandonment. The beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief.

Every general belief being little else than a fiction, it can only survive on the condition that it be not subjected to examination.

General beliefs are the indispensable pillars of civilisations; they determine the trend of ideas. They alone are capable of inspiring faith and creating a sense of duty.

As for the barbarians who destroyed the Roman civilisation, it was only when they had acquired certain commonly accepted beliefs that they attained a measure of cohesion and emerged from anarchy.