1841 – 1931. A famous French psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist and historian, founder of social psychology.
Quotes:
1. Ideas are daughters of the past and mother of the future, but throughout the slaves of time!
2. The most questionable phenomena are those observed by thousands of persons.
3. Our lazy consciousness calls for simplification.
4. Appearances have played a much more important part than reality in history, where the unreal is always of greater moment than the real.
5. Only foolishness, not intelligence, can accumulate in a crowd.
6. When it is difficult to inculcate a new idea, it is equally difficult to destroy the old one.
7. The power of words is so great that it suffices to designate in well-chosen terms the most odious things to make them acceptable for crowds.
8. The crowd never sought truth; it turns away from the obvious and unappealing and prefers to worship the misconception as long as this misconception is luring.
9. A scientist who begins to study a phenomenon should not take into account the interests that may be upset by his discoveries.
10. Among the great inventions that transformed the world, what is book printing, gunpowder, steam, electric telegraph, there is none that can be said to have been delivered by just a single head. When you study the origin of such discoveries, you see that they were born out of several preceding efforts: the final invention is only the pinnacle.
