Top 80 Gustave Le Bon Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “To give to men that portion of hope and illusion without which they cannot live, such is the reason for the existence of gods, heroes, and poets. During fifty years science appeared to undertake this task. But science has been compromised in hearts hungering after the ideal, because it does not dare to be lavish enough of promises, because it cannot lie.”

— Gustave Le Bon

52. “The gods and men who have kept their prestige for long have never tolerated discussion. For the crowd to admire, it must be kept at a distance.”

— Gustave Le Bon

53. “The dogmas whose birth we are witnessing will soon have the force of the old dogmas; that is to say, the tyrannical and sovereign force of being above discussion. The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings.”

— Gustave Le Bon

54. “In consequence of the purely destructive nature of their power crowds act like those microbes which hasten the dissolution of enfeebled or dead bodies. When the structure of a civilisation is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about its downfall.”

— Gustave Le Bon

55. “Peoples are governed by their character, and all institutions which are not intimately modelled on that character merely represent a borrowed garment, a transitory disguise.”

— Gustave Le Bon

56. “The functions of governments necessarily increase in proportion as the indifference and helplessness of the citizens grow.”

— Gustave Le Bon

57. “While all our ancient beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way one by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces, and of which the prestige is continually on the increase. The age we are about to enter will in truth be the ERA OF CROWDS.”

— Gustave Le Bon

58. “To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.”

— Gustave Le Bon

59. “When the structure of a civilisation is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about its downfall. It is at such a juncture that their chief mission is plainly visible, and that for a while the philosophy of number seems the only philosophy of history.”

— Gustave Le Bon

60. “The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought. The reason these great events are so rare is that there is nothing so stable in a race as the inherited groundwork of its thoughts.”

— Gustave Le Bon

61. “As soon as a certain number of living beings are gathered together, whether they be animals or men, they place themselves instinctively under the authority of a chief.”

— Gustave Le Bon

62. “Men are ruled by ideas, sentiments, and customs – matters which are of the essence of ourselves. Institutions and laws are the outward manifestation of our character, the expression of its needs. Being its outcome, institutions and laws cannot change this character.”

— Gustave Le Bon

63. “However great or true an idea may have been to begin with, it is deprived of almost all that which constituted its elevation and its greatness by the mere fact that it has come within the intellectual range of crowds and exerts an influence upon them.”

— Gustave Le Bon

64. “The disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning of feelings and ideas in an identical direction by means of suggestion and contagion, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.”

— Gustave Le Bon

65. “The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from those possessed by each of the cells singly.”

— Gustave Le Bon

66. “The individualities in the crowd who might possess a personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in number to struggle against the current. At the utmost, they may be able to attempt a diversion by means of different suggestions. It is in this way, for instance, that a happy expression, an image opportunely evoked, have occasionally deterred crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts.”

— Gustave Le Bon

67. “The violence of the feelings of crowds is also increased, especially in heterogeneous crowds, by the absence of all sense of responsibility.”

— Gustave Le Bon

68. “All founders of religious or political creeds have established them solely because they were successful in inspiring crowds with those fanatical sentiments which have as result that men find their happiness in worship and obedience and are ready to lay down their lives for their idol.”

— Gustave Le Bon

69. “It is terrible at times to think of the power that strong conviction combined with extreme narrowness of mind gives a man possessing prestige. It is none the less necessary that these conditions should be satisfied for a man to ignore obstacles and display strength of will in a high measure. Crowds instinctively recognise in men of energy and conviction the masters they are always in need of.”

— Gustave Le Bon

70. “To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue, to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people.”

— Gustave Le Bon

71. “If, then, crowds often abandon themselves to low instincts, they also set the example at times of acts of lofty morality.”

— Gustave Le Bon

72. “Experience has not taught them as yet to a sufficient degree that men never shape their conduct upon the teaching of pure reason.”

— Gustave Le Bon

73. “Peoples are not governed in accordance with their caprices of the moment, but as their character determines that they shall be governed. Centuries are required to form a political system and centuries needed to change it. Institutions have no intrinsic virtue: in themselves they are neither good nor bad.”

— Gustave Le Bon

74. “When, however, it is proposed to imbue the mind of a crowd with ideas and beliefs – with modern social theories, for instance – the leaders have recourse to different expedients. The principal of them are three in number and clearly defined – affirmation, repetition, and contagion. Their action is somewhat slow, but its effects, once produced, are very lasting.”

— Gustave Le Bon

75. “Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images. It is only images that terrify or attract them and become motives of action.”

— Gustave Le Bon

76. “The philosophic absurdity that often marks general beliefs has never been an obstacle to their triumph. Indeed the triumph of such beliefs would seem impossible unless on the condition that they offer some mysterious absurdity.”

— Gustave Le Bon

77. “The CASTE represents the highest degree of organisation of which the crowd is susceptible.”

— Gustave Le Bon

78. “The crowd state and the domination of crowds is equivalent to the barbarian state, or to a return to it.”

— Gustave Le Bon

79. “Personal interest is very rarely a powerful motive force with crowds, while it is almost the exclusive motive of the conduct of the isolated individual.”

— Gustave Le Bon

80. “An accident which should have caused the death of only five hundred instead of five thousand persons, but on the same day and in public, as the outcome of an accident appealing strongly to the eye, by the fall, for instance, of the Eiffel Tower, would have produced, on the contrary, an immense impression on the imagination of the crowd.”

— Gustave Le Bon

81. “The power of crowds is to be dreaded, but the power of certain castes is to be dreaded yet more. Crowds are open to conviction; castes never are.”

— Gustave Le Bon

82. “To-day the majority of the great men who have swayed men’s minds no longer have altars, but they have statues, or their portraits are in the hands of their admirers, and the cult of which they are the object is not notably different from that accorded to their predecessors.”

— Gustave Le Bon

83. “The candidates’ written programme should not be too categorical, since later on adversaries might bring it up against them; in their verbal programme, however, there cannot be too much exaggeration. The most important reforms may be fearlessly promised. At the moment they are made, these exaggerations produce a great effect, and they are not binding for the future.”

— Gustave Le Bon

84. “There can be no question to-day of a paper rich enough to allow its contributors to air their personal opinions, and such opinions would be of slight weight with readers who only ask to be kept informed or to be amused, and who suspect every affirmation of being prompted by motives of speculation.”

— Gustave Le Bon

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

— Gustave Le Bon

86. “Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, and are but slightly impressed by kindness, which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed on easy-going masters, but on tyrants who vigorously oppressed them.”

— Gustave Le Bon

87. “It is not easy to say as yet what will one day be evolved from this necessarily somewhat chaotic period. What will be the fundamental ideas on which the societies that are to succeed our own will be built up? We do not at present know. Still it is already clear that on whatever lines the societies of the future are organised, they will have to count with a new power, with the last surviving sovereign force of modern times, the power of crowds.”

— Gustave Le Bon

88. “Analogous examples are innumerable. As I write these lines the papers are full of the story of two little girls found drowned in the Seine. These children, to begin with, were recognised in the most unmistakable manner by half a dozen witnesses. All the affirmations were in such entire concordance that no doubt remained in the mind of the juge d’instruction.”

— Gustave Le Bon