Lesson #1: Crowds Make the Impossible Possible
The improbable does not exist for a crowd, and it is necessary to bear this circumstance well in mind to understand the facility with which are created and propagated the most improbable legends and stories.
Crowds, being incapable both of reflection and of reasoning, are devoid of the notion of improbability; and it is to be noted that in a general way it is the most improbable things that are the most striking.
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.
Clarification: If crowds are incapable of distinguishing between the improbable and the probable, and the images it associates with the improbable invoke action, then odd things are designed to happen.
Lesson #2: Crowds Create Bulldozer-Like Momentum
…the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint.
A crowd …is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realisation of its desire.