#193: “The Power of Words”

'The power of words is so great that it suffices to designate in well-chosen terms the most odious things to make them acceptable to crowds. Taine justly observes that it was by invoking liberty and fraternity—words very popular at the time—that the Jacobins were able "to install a despotism worthy of Dahomey, a tribunal similar to that of the Inquisition, and to accomplish human hecatombs^[*] akin to those of ancient Mexico." The art of those who govern, as is the case with the art of advocates, consists above all in the science of employing words.'**

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* Hetacomb: “Although originally the sacrifice of a hundred oxen in the religious ceremonies of the Greeks and Romans; later "hecatomb" came to describe a large number of any kind of animals devoted for sacrifice. Figuratively, "hecatomb" is used to describe the sacrifice or destruction by fire, tempest, disease or the sword of any large number of persons or animals; and also of the wholesale destruction of inanimate objects, and even of mental and moral attributes.” | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecatomb

** Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (p. 75). Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition.

Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (French: ... 7 May 1841 – 13 December 1931) was a leading French polymath [a person of encyclopedic learning] whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology. | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Le_Bon