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1 " As regards the subject class, we gets the following relations:1. When the subject class contains a number of indviduals desposed to use force and with capable leaders to guide them, the governing class is, in many cases, overthrown and another takes its place. That is easily the ase where governing class are inspired by humanitarian sentiments primarily and very easily if they do not find ways to assimilate the exceptional individuals who come to the front in the subject classes. A humanitarian aristocracy that is closed of stiffly exclusive represents the maximum of insecurity.2. It is far more difficult to overthrow a governing class that is adept in the shrewd use of chicanery, fraud, corruption; and in the highest degree difficult to overthrow such a class when it successfully assimilates most of the individuals in the subject class who show those same talents, are adept in those same arts, and might therefore become the leaders of such plebeians as are disposed to use violence. Thus left without leadership, without talent, disorganized, the subject class is almost always powerless to set up any lasting regime.3. So the combination residues (Class I) become to some extent enfeebled in the subject class. "
― Vilfredo Pareto , The Mind and Society
2 " People reasoning on essences may sometimes substitute certitude for probability, even very great probability. But we know nothing about essences and accordingly lose our certitude. "
3 " The sentiment that is very inappropriately named quality is fresh, strong, alert, precisely because it is not, in fact, a sentiment of equality and is not related to any abstraction, as a few naive “intellectuals” still believe; but because it is related to the direct interests of individuals who are bent on escaping certain inequalities not in their favour, and setting up new inequalities that will be in their favour, that latter being their chief concern. "
4 " Once experience is admitted within the theological edifice, the latter begins to crumble – such portion of it, of course, as stands within the experimental domain, for the other wings are safe from any attack by experience. So years, centuries, go by; peoples, governments, manners and systems of living, pass away; and all along new theologies, new systems of metaphysics, keep replacing the old, and each new one is reputed more “true” or much “better” that its predecessors. And in certain cases they may really be better, if by “better” we means more helpful to society; but more “true”, no, if by the term we mean accord with experimental reality. One faith cannot be more scientific than another, and experimental reality is equally overreached by polytheism, Islamism, and Christianity (whether Catholic, Protestant, Liberal, Modernist, or of any other variety); by the innumerable metaphysical sects, including the Kantian, the Hegelian, the Bergsonian, and not excluding the positivistic sects of Comte, Spencer, and other eminent writers too numerous to mention; by the faiths of solidaristes, humanitarians, anti-clericals, and worshippers of Progress; and by as many other faiths as have existed, exist, or can be imagined. "
5 " In politics all ruling classes have at all times identified their own interests with the “interests of the country.” When politicians are afraid of a too rapid increase in the number of proletarians, they are for birth-control and show that Malthusianism is to the interests of public and country. If, instead, they are afraid a population may prove inadequate for their designs, they are against birth-control, and show just as conclusively that their interest is the interest of public and country. And all that is accepted as long as residues remain favourable. The situation changes as residues change never in view of arguments pro or contra. "
6 " The art of government lies in finding ways to take advantage of such sentiments, not wasting one’s energy in futile efforts to destroy them; very frequently the sole effect of the latter course is to strengthen them. The person capable of freeing himself from the blind domination of his own sentiments will be able to utilize the sentiments of other people for his own ends … This may be said in general of the relation between ruler and ruled. The statesman who is of greatest service to himself and to his party is the man without prejudice who knows how to profit by the prejudices of others. "
