Thought:

“For there is a real magic in the action and reaction of minds on one another. The casual deliration of a few becomes, by this mysterious reverberation, the frenzy of many; men lose the use, not only of their understandings, but of their bodily senses; while the most obstinate unbelieving hearts melt, like the rest, in the furnace where all are cast as victims and as fuel.”

Thomas Carlyle | Signs of the Times