John MacKay

John Mackay's The Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness Of Crowds is widely considered the place to begin one's study of economic bubbles and societies run amok.

While subsequent researchers have accused Mackay of exaggeration with regards to the Holland's famed "Tulip Mania" of the 1630s, the work remains highly regarded by social scientists of all stripes, from the economists to the social shrinks.

Best of all it's a fun read as Mackay knows how to tell a story.

Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of the multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and then one by one.

In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.

Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled.

Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome.

An arrow may fly through the air and leave no trace; but an ill thought leaves a trail like a serpent.