The truly and deliberately evil men are in a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, uninformed, vacillating characters of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out  the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.

Altruism as Appeasement
Ayn Rand
TO, 1-66, 6.