The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective [propaganda] will be.
To be infatuated with the power of one's own intellect is an accident which seldom happens but to those who are remarkable for the want of intellectual power. Whenever Nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.
We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man. But in his presence our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he says.
The elimination of the will altogether and the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, is tantamount to the elimination of reason: intellectual castration.
For such is man: a Theological Dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times - provided however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as true. Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will. Fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system.