That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.
Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.177, David M Gross