Wit & Attitude Quote by Alexander Herzen

Herzen’s line lands like a cold slap because it refuses the comforting myth that mass delusion is an accident. The verbs escalate with prosecutorial rhythm: “lead astray,” “strike…blind,” “drive…insane,” “direct…towards a false goal.” He’s not describing a policy failure; he’s describing an engineered collapse of perception. Napoleon is the exhibit A not because he was uniquely monstrous, but because he perfected a modern trick: turning history into a stage where charisma and conquest masquerade as destiny.

The subtext is a warning to Herzen’s own century. Writing in the long hangover after the Napoleonic wars, Herzen had watched Europe binge on the idea of the “great man,” then pay the bill in corpses, censorship, and reaction. Napoleon becomes a shorthand for how a generation can be drafted into someone else’s narrative and mistake it for its own emancipation. “False goal” is the key phrase: the danger isn’t merely being misled, it’s being mobilized. The crowd doesn’t just err; it marches, sacrifices, and hardens itself around the error.

As a journalist and exile steeped in the churn of 1848 and Russian autocracy, Herzen also aims at the machinery that makes such enchantment scalable: propaganda, mythmaking, the intoxicating simplifications of national glory. His cynicism is practical. He’s saying: don’t overestimate the people’s immunity, don’t underestimate the seductions of order, and never confuse collective fervor with collective insight.