“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

Section 5, Ch. 2: The Desire For Substitutes
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

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Eric Hoffer240

American philosopher 1898–1983

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