Eric Hoffer: The downside of some revolutions

No. 63

The link between ideas and action is rarely direct.  There is almost always an intermediary step in which the idea is overcome.  De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously transformed into political action.  The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives.  Hence it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulated them.

One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action--the ability to pass directly from thought to action. 
-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


Within the past decade or so, how many popular revolutions or coups have we seen that successfully replaced dictatorships or tyrannies with regimes that are as bad or worse, in spite of the rhetoric that accompanied them?

Is Hoffer suggesting that the great majority of people can't be moved to act through reason or by intelligent thought but that they have to be stirred up by strong emotions or passion to accomplish something?

Are shouting, bullying, insulting comments, or emotionally laden slogans more likely to move people to act than calm reason and facts?