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A Man Is Likely To Mind His Own Business When It Is Worth Minding. When It Is Not, He Takes His Mind Off His Own Meaningless Affairs By Minding Other People's Business.this Minding Of Other People's Business Expresses Itself In Gossip, Snooping And Meddling, And Also In Feverish Interest In Communal, National And Racial Affairs. In Running Away From Ourselves We Either Fall On Our Neighbor's Shoulder Or Fly At His Throat.

-Eric Hoffer

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A Man Is Likely

Eric Hoffer

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A Man Is Likely To Mind His Own Business When It Is Worth Minding. When It Is Not, He Takes His Mind Off His Own Meaningless Affairs By Minding Other People's Business.this Minding Of Other People's Business Expresses Itself In Gossip, Snooping And Meddling, And Also In Feverish Interest In Communal, National And Racial Affairs. In Running Away From Ourselves We Either Fall On Our Neighbor's Shoulder Or Fly At His Throat.

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Where There Is The Necessary Technical Skill To Move Mountains, There Is No Need For The Faith That Moves Mountains.

We Cannot Win The Weak By Sharing Our Wealth With Them. They Feel Our Generosity As Oppression.

Our Credulity Is Greatest Concerning The Things We Know Least About.

The Rule Seems To Be That Those Who Find No Difficulty In Deceiving Themselves Are Easily Deceived By Others. They Are Easily Persuaded And Led.

In Products Of The Human Mind, Simplicity Marks The End Of A Process Of Refining, While Complexity Marks A Primitive Stage. Michelangelo 's Definition Of Art As The Purgation Of Superfluities Suggests That The Creative Effort Consists Largely In The Elimination Of That Which Complicates And Confuses A Pattern.

We Probably Have A Greater Love For Those We Support Than For Those Who Support Us. Our Vanity Carries More Weight Than Our Self-interest.

Those Who Lack The Capacity To Achieve Much In An Atmosphere Of Freedom Will Clamor For Power.

Spiritual Stagnation Ensues When Man's Environment Becomes Unpredictable Or When His Inner Life Is Made Wholly Predictable.

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

No Matter What Our Achievements Might Be, We Think Well Of Ourselves Only In Rare Moments. We Need People To Bear Witness Against Our Inner Judge, Who Keeps Book On Our Shortcomings And Transgressions. We Need People To Convince Us That We Are Not As Bad As We Think We Are.

A Passionate Obsession With The Outside World Or The Private Lives Of Others Is An Attempt To Compensate For A Lack Of Meaning In One's Own Life

There Is Need For Some Kind Of Make-believe In Order To Face Death Unflinchingly. To Our Real, Naked Selves There Is Not A Thing On Earth Or In Heaven Worth Dying For.

The Real "haves" Are They Who Can Acquire Freedom, Self-confidence, And Even Riches Without Depriving Others Of Them. They Acquire All Of These By Developing And Applying Their Potentialities. On The Other Hand, The Real "have Nots" Are They Who Cannot Have Aught Except By Depriving Others Of It. They Can Feel Free Only By Diminishing The Freedom Of Others, Self-confident By Spreading Fear And Dependence Among Others, And Rich By Making Others Poor.

Self Confidence

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.

When We Debunk A Fanatical Faith Or Prejudice, We Do Not Strike At The Root Of Fanaticism. We Merely Prevent Its Leaking Out At A Certain Point, With The Likely Result That It Will Leak Out At Some Other Point.

The Proselytizing Fanatic Strengthens His Own Faith By Converting Others. The Creed Whose Legitimacy Is Most Easily Challenged Is Likely To Develop The Strongest Proselytizing Impulse.

To Be Fully Alive Is To Feel That Everything Is Possible.

The Less Satisfaction We Derive From Being Ourselves, The Greater Is Our Desire To Be Like Others.

It Is Easier To Hate An Enemy With Much Good In Him Than One Who Is All Bad. We Cannot Hate Those We Despise.

We Can Never Have Enough Of That Which We Really Do Not Want.

Faith Is Primarily A Process Of Identification; The Process By Which The Individual Ceases To Be Himself And Becomes Part Of Something Eternal.

There Is A Radicalism In All Getting, And A Conservatism In All Keeping. Lovemaking Is Radical, While Marriage Is Conservative.

The True Believer, No Matter How Rowdy And Violent His Acts, Is Basically An Obedient And Submissive Person.

The Best Part Of The Art Of Living Is To Know How To Grow Old Gracefully.

The Capacity For Getting Along With Our Neighbor Depends To A Large Extent On The Capacity For Getting Along With Ourselves. The Self-respecting Individual Will Try To Be As Tolerant Of His Neighbor's Shortcomings As He Is Of His Own.

To Know A Person's Religion We Need Not Listen To His Profession Of Faith But Must Find His Brand Of Intolerance.

The Short-lived Self, Teetering On The Edge Of Extinction, Is The Only Thing That Can Ever Really Matter.

The Taint Inherent In Absolute Power Is Not Its Inhumanity But Its Antihumanity.

Action Is Basically A Reaction Against Loss Of Balance - A Flailing Of The Arms To To Regain One's Balance. To Dispose A Soul To Action, We Must Upset Its Equilibrium.

Call Not That Man Wretched, Who Whatever Ills He Suffers, Has A Child To Love.

Youth Itself Is A Talent, A Perishable Talent.

The Ability To Get Along Without An Exceptional Leader Is The Mark Of Social Vigor.

Nature Attains Perfection, But Man Never Does.

A Man By Himself Is In Bad Company.

When We Believe Ourselves In Possession Of The Only Truth, We Are Likely To Be Indifferent To Common Everyday Truths.

Whoever Originated The Cliche That Money Is The Root Of All Evil Knew Hardly Anything About The Nature Of Evil And Very Little About Human Beings.

There Is No Telling To What Extremes Of Cruelty And Ruthlessness A Man Will Go When He Is Freed From The Fears, Hesitations, Doubts And The Vague Stirrings Of Decency That Go With Individual Judgment.

I Have A Premonition That Will Not Leave Me: As It Goes With Israel So Will It Go With All Of Us. Should Israel Perish, The Holocaust Will Be Upon Us.

Animals Can Learn, But It Is Not By Learning That They Become Dogs, Cats, Or Horses. Only Man Has To Learn To Become What He Is Supposed To Be.

The Most Gifted Members Of The Human Species Are At Their Creative Best When They Cannot Have Their Way, And Must Compensate For What They Miss By Realizing And Cultivating Their Capacities And Talents.

Ideas Have Significance For Him Only As A Prelude To Action.

The Weakness Of A Soul Is Proportionate To The Number Of Truths That Must Be Kept From It.

The Ignorant Are A Reservoir Of Daring. It Almost Seems That Those Who Have Yet To Discover The Known Are Particularly Equipped For Dealing With The Unknown. The Unlearned Have Often Rushed In Where The Learned Feared To Tread, And It Is The Credulous Who Are Tempted To Attempt The Impossible. They Know Not Whither They Are Going, And Give Chance A Chance.

It Is Not So Much The Example Of Others We Imitate As The Reflection Of Ourselves In Their Eyes And The Echo Of Ourselves In Their Words.

We Are More Ready To Try The Untried When What We Do Is Inconsequential. Hence The Remarkable Fact That Many Inventions Had Their Birth As Toys.

Every Device Employed To Bolster Individual Freedom Must Have As Its Chief Purpose The Impairment Of The Absoluteness Of Power. The Indications Are That Such An Impairment Is Brought About Not By Strengthening The Individual And Pitting Him Against The Possessors Of Power, But By Distributing And Diversifying Power And Pitting One Category Or Unit Of Power Against The Other. Where Power Is One, The Defeated Individual, However Strong And Resourceful, Can Have No Refuge And No Recourse.

There Is A Guilty Conscience Behind Every Brazen Word And Act And Behind Every Manifestation Of Self-righteousness.

We Have Rudiments Of Reverence For The Human Body, But We Consider As Nothing The Rape Of The Human Mind.

Where Freedom Is Real, Equality Is The Passion Of The Masses. Where Equality Is Real, Freedom Is The Passion Of A Small Minority.

Imitation Is Often A Shortcut To A Solution. We Copy When We Lack The Inclination, The Ability Or The Time To Work Out An Independent Solution. People In A Hurry Will Imitate More Readily Than People At Leisure. Hustling Thus Tends To Produce Uniformity. And In The Deliberate Fusing Of Individuals Into A Compact Group, Incessant Action Will Play A Considerable Role.

Action Is At Bottom A Swinging And Flailing Of The Arms To Regain One's Balance And Keep Afloat.

People Whose Lives Are Barren And Insecure Seem To Show A Greater Willingness To Obey Than People Who Are Self-sufficient And Self-confident. To The Frustrated, Freedom From Responsibility Is More Attractive Than Freedom From Restraint.

When Watching Men Of Power In Action It Must Be Always Kept In Mind That, Whether They Know It Or Not, Their Main Purpose Is The Elimination Or Neutralization Of The Independent Individual- The Independent Voter, Consumer, Worker, Owner, Thinker- And That Every Device They Employ Aims At Turning Men Into A Manipulable Animated Instrument Which Is Aristotle's Definition Of A Slave.

No Totalitarian Censor Can Approach The Implacability Of The Censor Who Controls The Line Of Communication Between The Outer World And Our Consciousness. Nothing Is Allowed To Reach Us Which Might Weaken Our Confidence And Lower Our Morale. To Most Of Us Nothing Is So Invisible As An Unpleasant Truth.

They Who Clamor Loudest For Freedom Are Often The Ones Least Likely To Be Happy In A Free Society.

Good Writing , Like Gold , Combines Lustrous Lucidity With High Density. What This Means Is Good Writing Is Packed With Hints.

Those Who Would Sacrifice A Generation To Realize An Ideal Are The Enemies Of Mankind.

There Is A Tendency To Judge A Race, A Nation Or Any Distinct Group By Its Leastworthy Members.

There Would Be No Society If Living Together Depended Upon Understanding Each Other.

Good And Evil Grow Up Together And Are Bound In An Equilibrium That Cannot Be Sundered. The Most We Can Do Is Try To Tilt The Equilibrium Toward The Good.

Quite Often In History Action Has Been The Echo Of Words. An Era Of Talk Was Followed By An Era Of Events. The New Barbarism Of The Twentieth Century Is The Echo Of Words Bandied About By Brilliant Speakers And Writers In The Second Half Of The Nineteenth.

My Writing Is Done In Railroad Yards While Waiting For A Freight, In The Fields While Waiting For A Truck, And At Noon After Lunch. Towns Are Too Distracting.

The Leader Personifies The Certitude Of The Creed And The Defiance And Grandeur Of Power. He Articulates And Justifies The Resentment Damned Up In The Souls Of The Frustrated. He Kindles The Vision Of A Breath-taking Future So As To Justify The Sacrifice Of A Transitory Present. He Stages A World Of Make-believe So Indispensable For The Realization Of Self-sacrifice And United Action.

When People Are Bored It Is Primarily With Themselves.

The Urge To Escape Our Real Self Is Also An Urge To Escape The Rational And The Obvious.

All Great Art Is Revolutionary Because It Touches Upon The Reality Of Man And Questions The Reality Of The Various Transitory Forms Of Human Society.

How Rare It Is To Come Across A Piece Of Writing That Is Unambiguous, Unqualified, And Also Unblurred By Understatements Or Subtleties, And Yet At The Same Time Urbane And Tolerant. It Is A Vice Of The Scientific Method When Applied To Human Affairs That It Fosters Hemming And Hawing And A Scrupulousness That Easily Degenerates Into Obscurity And Meaninglessness.

Those Who See Their Lives As Spoiled And Wasted Crave Equality And Fraternity More Than They Do Freedom. If They Clamor For Freedom, It Is But Freedom To Establish Equality And Uniformity.

To Find The Cause Of Our Ills In Something Outside Ourselves, Something Specific That Can Be Spotted And Eliminated, Is A Diagnosis That Cannot Fail To Appeal. To Say That The Cause Of Our Troubles Is Not In Us But In The Jews , And Pass Immediately To The Extermination Of The Jews, Is A Prescription Likely To Find A Wide Acceptance.

The Wise Learn From The Experience Of Others, And The Creative Know How To Make A Crumb Of Experience Go A Long Way.

...in The Shaping Of A Life, Chance And The Ability To Respond To Chance Are Everything.

There Is A Powerful Craving In Most Of Us To See Ourselves As Instruments In The Hands Of Others And Thus Free Ourselves From The Responsibility For Acts Which Are Prompted By Our Own Questionable Inclinations And Impulses.

Unlike The Pattern Which Seems To Prevail In The Rest Of Life, In The Human Species The Weak Not Only Survive But Often Triumph Over The Strong. The Self-hatred Inherent In The Weak Unlocks Energies Far More Formidable Then Those Mobilized By An Ordinary Struggle For Existence.

There Is A Time When The Word "eventually" Has The Soothing Effect Of A Promise, And A Time When The Word Evokes In Us Bitterness And Scorn.

That Which Corrodes The Souls Of The Persecuted Is The Monstrous Inner Agreement With The Prevailing Prejudice Against Them.

To Grow Old Is To Grow Common. Old Age Equalizes -- We Are Aware That What Is Happening To Us Has Happened To Untold Numbers From The Beginning Of Time. When We Are Young We Act As If We Were The First Young People In The World.

The Sick In Soul Insist That It Is Humanity That Is Sick, And They Are The Surgeons To Operate On It. They Want To Turn The World Into A Sickroom. And Once They Get Humanity Strapped To The Operating Table, They Operate On It With An Ax.

The Poor On The Borderline Of Starvation Live Purposeful Lives. To Be Engaged In A Desperate Struggle For Food And Shelter Is To Be Wholly Free From A Sense Of Futility

Many Of The Insights Of The Saint Stem From His Experience As A Sinner.

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

Where Everything Is Possible Miracles Become Commonplaces, But The Familiar Ceases To Be Self-evident.

We Are Ready To Die For An Opinion But Not For A Fact

A War Is Not Won If The Defeated Enemy Has Not Been Turned Into A Friend.

There Are Many Who Have Grave Scruples About Deceiving But Think It As Nothing To Deceive Themselves.

You Accept Certain Unlovely Things About Yourself And Manage To Live With Them. The Atonement For Such An Acceptance Is That You Make Allowances For Others - That You Cleanse Yourself Of The Sin Of Self-righteousness.

When Hopes And Dreams Are Loose In The Streets, It Is Well For The Timid To Lock Doors, Shutter Windows And Lie Low Until The Wrath Has Passed. For There Is Often A Monstrous Incongruity Between The Hopes, However Noble And Tender, And The Action Which Follows Them. It Is As If Ivied Maidens And Garlanded Youths Were To Herald The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse .

The Effectiveness Of A Doctrine Does Not Come From Its Meaning But From Its Certitude. No Doctrine However Profound And Sublime Will Be Effective Unless It Is Presented As The Embodiment Of The One And Only Truth

The Act Of Self-denial Seems To Confer On Us The Right To Be Harsh And Merciless Toward Others.

The Original Insight Is Most Likely To Come When Elements Stored In Different Compartments Of The Mind Drift Into The Open, Jostle One Another, And Now And Then Form New Combinations.

A Soul That Is Reluctant To Share Does Not As A Rule Have Much Of Its Own. Miserliness Is Here A Symptom Of Meagerness.

Nature Is A Self-made Machine, More Perfectly Automated Than Any Automated Machine. To Create Something In The Image Of Nature Is To Create A Machine, And It Was By Learning The Inner Working Of Nature That Man Became A Builder Of Machines.

The Difficult And Risky Task Of Meeting And Mastering The New . . . Is Not Undertaken By The Vanguard Of Society But By Its Rear. It Is The Misfits, Failures, Fugitives, Outcasts And Their Like Who Are Among The First To Grapple With The New.

Our Achievements Speak For Themselves. What We Have To Keep Track Of Are Our Failures, Discouragements And Doubts.

We Usually See Only The Things We Are Looking For- So Much So That We Sometimes See Them Where They Are Not.

To Be Ruthless Requires Belief That Our Life On Earth Is But A Brief Prelude To An Afterlife, Or A Temporary Sacrifice Before Some Utopia Can Be Instituted. Where There Is The Necessary Technical Skill To Move Mountains, There Is No Need For The Faith That Moves Mountains.

An Empty Head Is Not Really Empty; It Is Stuffed With Rubbish. Hence The Difficulty Of Forcing Anything Into An Empty Head.

There Is A Totalitarian Regime Inside Every One Of Us. We Are Ruled By A Ruthless Politburo Which Sets Our Norms And Drives Us From One Five-year Plan To Another. The Autonomous Individual Who Has To Justify His Existence By His Own Efforts Is In Eternal Bondage To Himself.

...the Differences Between The Conservative And The Radical Seem To Spring Mainly From Their Attitude Toward The Future. Fear Of The Future Causes Us To Lean Against And Cling To The Present, While Faith In The Future Renders Us Receptive To Change.

Love-making Is Radical, While Marriage Is Conservative.

Give People Pride And They'll Live On Bread And Water, Bless Their Exploiters, And Even Die For Them. Self-surrender Is A Transaction Of Barter: We Surrender Our Sense Of Human Dignity, Our Judgement, Or Moral And Aesthetic Sense For Pride. If There Is Pride In Being Free, We Are Ready To Die For Liberty. If There Is Pride To Be Derived From An Identification With A Leader, We Grovel In The Dust Before A Napoléon, Hitler Or Stalin And Are Ready To Die For Him. If There Is A Distinction In Suffering We Search For Martyrdom As For Hidden Treasure.

Man Is The Only Creature That Strives To Surpass Himself, And Yearns For The Impossible.

The Misery Of A Child Is Interesting To A Mother, The Misery Of A Young Man Is Interesting To A Young Woman, The Misery Of An Old Man Is Interesting To Nobody.

Thought Is A Process Of Exaggeration. The Refusal To Exaggerate Is Not Infrequently An Alibi For The Disinclination To Think Or Praise.

Exaggeration Is

There Are Similarities Between Absolute Power And Absolute Faith: A Demand For Absolute Obedience, A Readiness To Attempt The Impossible, A Bias For Simple Solutionsto Cut The Knot Rather Than Unravel It, The Viewing Of Compromise As Surrender. Both Absolute Power And Absolute Faith Are Instruments Of Dehumanization. Hence, Absolute Faith Corrupts As Absolutely As Absolute Power.

We Never Say So Much As When We Do Not Quite Know What We Want To Say. We Need Few Words When We Have Something To Say, But All The Words In All The Dictionaries Will Not Suffice When We Have Nothing To Say And Want Desperately To Say It.

The Suspicious Mind Believes More Than It Doubts. It Believes In A Formidable And Ineradicable Evil Lurking In Every Person.

There Is No Loneliness Greater Than The Loneliness Of A Failure. The Failure Is A Stranger In His Own House.

Nationalist Pride, Like Other Variants Of Pride, Can Be A Substitute For Self-respect.

I Hang Onto My Prejudices, They Are The Testicles Of My Mind.

For Though Ours Is A Godless Age, It Is The Very Opposite Of Irreligious. The True Believer Is Everywhere On The March, And Both By Converting And Antagonizing He Is Shaping The World In His Own Image. And Whether We Are To Line Up With Him Or Against Him, It Is Well That We Should Know All We Can Concerning His Nature And Potentialities.

To The Frustrated, Freedom From Responsibility Is More Attractive Than Freedom From Restraint.

Self-contempt, However Vague, Sharpens Our Eyes For The Imperfections Of Others. We Usually Strive To Reveal In Others The Blemishes We Hide In Ourselves.

How Terribly Hard And Almost Impossible It Is To Tell The Truth. More Than Anything Else, The Artist In Us Prevents Us From Telling Aught As It Really Happened. We Deal With The Truth As The Cook Deals With Meat And Vegetables.

There Is In Most Passions A Shrinking Away From Ourselves. The Passionate Pursuer Has All The Earmarks Of A Fugitive.

The Genuine Artist Is As Much A Dissatisfied Person As The Revolutionary, Yet How Diametrically Opposed Are The Products Each Distills From His Dissatisfaction.

A Plant Needs Roots In Order To Grow. With Man It Is The Other Way Around: Only When He Grows Does He Have Roots And Feels At Home In The World.

Nonconformists Travel As A Rule In Bunches. You Rarely Find A Nonconformist Who Goes It Alone. And Woe To Him Inside A Nonconformist Clique Who Does Not Conform With Nonconformity.

Help Your Sister's Boat Across The Water, And Yours Too Will Reach The Other Side. Kindness Can Become Its Own Motive. We Are Made Kind By Being Kind.

To The Old, The New Is Usually Bad News.

Laughter To Begin With Was Probably Glee At The Misfortunes Of Others. The Baring Of The Teeth In Laughter Hints At Its Savage Ancestry. Animals Have No Malice, Hence Also No Laughter. They Never Savor The Sudden Glory Of Schadenfreude. It Was Its Infectious Quality That Made Of Laughter A Medium Of Mutuality.

Take Man's Most Fantastic Invention- God. Man Invents God In The Image Of His Longings, In The Image Of What He Wants To Be, Then Proceeds To Imitate That Image, Vie With It, And Strive To Overcome It.

Ours Is A Golden Age Of Minorities. At No Time In The Past Have Dissident Minorities Felt So Much At Home And Had So Much Room To Throw Their Weight Around. They Speak And Act As If They Were "the People," And What They Abominate Most Is The Dissent Of The Majority.

Judgment Consists Not In Seeing Through Deceptions And Evil Intentions, But In Being Able To Awaken The Decency Dormant In Every Person.

You Rarely Find A Nonconformist Who Goes It Alone.

To Believe That If Only We Had This Or That We Would Be Happy, Or To Pursue Any Excessive Desire, Diverts Us From Seeing That Happiness Depends On An Adequate Self.

You Cannot Gauge The Intelligence Of An American By Talking With Him; You Must Work With Him. The American Polishes And Refines His Way Of Doing Things-even The Most Commonplace-the Way The French Of The 17th Century Polished Their Maxims.

God Alone Is Satisfied With What He Is And Can Proclaim: "i Am What I Am." Unlike God, Man Strives With All His Might To Be What He Is Not. He Incessantly Proclaims: "i Am What I Am Not.

Whenever You Trace The Origin Of A Skill Or Practices Which Played A Crucial Role In The Ascent Of Man, We Usually Reach The Realm Of Play.

It Is Loneliness That Makes The Loudest Noise. This Is True Of Men As Of Dogs.

I Can Never Forget That One Of The Most Gifted, Best Educated Nations In The World, Of Its Own Free Will, Surrendered Its Fate Into The Hands Of A Maniac.

Facts Are Counterrevolutionary.

What Monstrosities Would Walk The Streets Were Some People's Faces As Unfinished As Their Minds.

Woe To Him Inside A Non-conformist Clique Who Does Not Conform To Non-conformity.

Whenever We Proclaim The Uniqueness Of A Religion , A Truth , A Leader, A Nation, A Race, A Part Or A Holy Cause, We Are Also Proclaiming Our Own Uniqueness.

Unity And Self-sacrifice, Of Themselves, Even When Fostered By The Most Noble Means, Produce A Facility For Hating. Even When Men League Themselves Mightily Together To Promote Tolerance And Peace On Earth, They Are Likely To Be Violently Intolerant Toward Those Not Of A Like Mind.

Our Originality Shows Itself Most Strikingly Not In What We Wholly Originate But In What We Do With That Which We Borrow From Others.

Our Achievements Speak For Themselves. What We Have To Keep Track Of Are Our Failures, Discouragements And Doubts. We Tend To Forget The Past Difficulties, The Many False Starts, And The Painful Groping. We See Our Past Achievements As The End Results Of A Clean Forward Thrust, And Our Present Difficulties As Signs Of Decline And Decay.

There Is No Telling To What Extremes Of Cruelty And Ruthlessness A Man Will Go When He Is Freed From The Fears, Hesitations, Doubts And The Vague Stirrings Of Decency That Go With Individual Judgement. When We Lose Our Individual Independence In The Corporateness Of A Mass Movement, We Find A New Freedom- Freedom To Hate, Bully, Lie, Torture, Murder And Betray Without Shame And Remorse. Herein Undoubtedly Lies Part Of The Attractiveness Of A Mass Movement

How Much Easier Is Self-sacrifice Than Self-realization!

When Cowardice Is Made Respectable, Its Followers Are Without Number Both From Among The Weak And The Strong; It Easily Becomes A Fashion.

To Spell Out The Obvious Is Often To Call It In Question.

The Most Troublesome Problem Which Confronts Social Engineering Is How To Provide For The Untalented And, What Is Equally Important, How To Provide Against Them.

To A Man Utterly Without A Sense Of Belonging, Mere Life Is All That Matters. It Is The Only Reality In An Eternity Of Nothingness, And He Clings To It With Shameless Despair.

With Some People Solitariness Is An Escape Not From Others But From Themselves. For They See In The Eyes Of Others Only A Reflection Of Themselves.

The Leader Has To Be Practical And A Realist, Yet Must Talk The Language Of The Visionary And The Idealist.

It Is Not Love Of Self But Hatred Of Self Which Is At The Root Of The Troubles That Afflict Our World.

Man Is A Luxury-loving Animal. Take Away Play, Fancies, And Luxuries, And You Will Turn Man Into A Dull, Sluggish Creature, Barely Energetic Enough To Obtain A Bare Subsistence. A Society Becomes Stagnant When Its People Are Too Rational Or Too Serious To Be Tempted By Baubles.

When We Are In Competition With Ourselves, And Match Our Todays Against Our Yesterdays, We Derive Encouragement From Past Misfortunes And Blemishes. Moreover, The Competition With Ourselves Leaves Unimpaired Our Benevolence Toward Our Fellow Men.

A Doctrine Insulates The Devout Not Only Against The Realities Around Them But Also Against Their Own Selves. The Fanatical Believer Is Not Conscious Of His Envy, Malice, Pettiness And Dishonesty. There Is A Wall Of Words Between His Consciousness And His Real Self.

It Is To Escape The Responsibility For Failure That The Weak So Eagerly Throw Themselves Into Grandiose Undertakings.

Rudeness Is The Weak Man's Limitation Of Strength.

Lack Of Sensitivity Is Perhaps Basically An Unawareness Of Ourselves.

When People Are Free To Do As They Please, They Usually Imitate Each Other.

Nothing So Offends The Doctrinaire Intellectual As Our Ability To Achieve The Momentous In A Matter-of-fact Way, Unblessed By Words.

There Are No Chaste Minds. Minds Copulate Wherever They Meet.

A Nation Without Dregs And Malcontents Is Orderly, Peaceful And Pleasant, But Perhaps Without The Seed Of Things To Come.

The Majority Prove Their Worth By Keeping Busy. A Busy Life Is The Nearest Thing To A Purposeful Life.

A Grievance Is Most Poignant When Almost Redressed.

Commitment Becomes Hysterical When Those Who Have Nothing To Give Advocate Generosity, And Those Who Have Nothing To Give Up Preach Renunciation.

In An Adequate Social Order, The Untalented Should Be Able To Acquire A Sense Of Usefulness And Of Growth Without Interfering With The Development Of Talent Around Them

By All Odds, Earliest Man, So Naked To The Elements And To Deadly Enemies, Should Have Existed In A State Of Constant Shock. We Find Him Instead The Only Lighthearted Being In A Deadly Serious Universe.... He Alone, With Childish Carelessness, Tinkered And Played, And Exerted Himself More In The Pursuit Of Superfluities Than Of Necessities. Yet The Tinkering And Playing, And The Fascination With The Nonessential, Were A Chief Source Of The Inventiveness Which Enabled Man To Prevail Over Better-equipped And More-purposeful Animals.

Freedom Means Freedom From Forces And Circumstances Which Would Turn Man Into A Thing, Which Would Impose On Man The Passivity And Predictability Of Matter. By This Test, Absolute Power Is The Manifestation Most Inimical To Human Uniqueness. Absolute Power Wants To Turn People Into Malleable Clay.

It Is The Malady Of Our Age That The Young Are So Busy Teaching Us That They Have No Time Left To Learn.

The Uncompromising Attitude Is More Indicative Of An Inner Uncertainty Than A Deep Conviction. The Implacable Stand Is Directed More Against The Doubt Within Than The Assailant Without.

Our Credulity Is Greatest Concerning The Things We Know Least About. And Since We Know Least About Ourselves, We Are Ready To Believe All That Is Said About Us. Hence The Mysterious Power Of Both Flattery And Calumny.

To Overestimate The Originality Of One's Thoughts Is Perhaps A Less Serious Defect Than Being Unaware Of Their Newness. There Is A More Pronounced Lack Of Sensitivity In Underestimating (ourselves And Others) Than In Overestimating.

We Often Use Strong Language Not To Express A Powerful Emotion But To Evoke It In Us.

Both Faith And Terror Are Instruments For The Elimination Of Individual Self-respect. Terror Crushes The Autonomy Of Self-respect, Where Faith Obtains Its More Or Less Voluntary Surrender. In Both Cases, The Result Of The Elimination Of Individual Autonomy Is - Automatism. Both Faith And Terror Reduce The Human Entity To A Formula That Can Be Manipulated At Will.

This Food-and-shelter Theory Concerning Man's Efforts Is Without Insight. The Desire For Praise Is More Imperative Than The Desire For Food And Shelter

That Which Is Unique And Worthwhile In Us Makes Itself Felt Only In Flashes. If We Do Not Know How To Catch And Savor The Flashes We Are Without Growth And Exhilaration.

There Is No Reason To Believe That The Nature Of The Violent Minorities Is Now Greatly Different From What It Was In The Past. What Has Changed Is The Will And Ability Of The Majority To React.

A Mass Movement Attracts And Holds A Following Not Because It Can Satisfy The Desire For Self-advancement, But Because It Can Satisfy The Passion For Self-renunciation.

The Frustrated Follow A Leader Less Because Of Their Faith That He Is Leading Them To A Promised Land Than Because Of Their Immediate Feeling That He Is Leading Them Away From Their Unwanted Selves. Surrender To A Leader Is Not A Means To An End But A Fulfillment. Whither They Are Led Is Of Secondary Importance.

Compassion Is The Antitoxin Of The Soul.

The Individual's Most Vital Need Is To Prove His Worth, And This Usually Means An Insatiable Hunger For Action. For It Is Only The Few Who Can Acquire A Sense Of Worth By Developing And Employing Their Capacities And Talents. The Majority Prove Their Worth By Keeping Busy.

Insatiable Hunger

Our Greatest Pretenses Are Built Up Not To Hide The Evil And The Ugly In Us, But Our Emptiness. The Hardest Thing To Hide Is Something That Is Not There.

Mass Movements Can Rise And Spread Without Belief In A God, But Never Without Belief In A Devil.

People In A Hurry Cannot Think, Cannot Grow, Nor Can They Decay. They Are Preserved In A State Of Perpetual Puerility.

It Has Often Been Said That Power Corrupts. But It Is Perhaps Equally Important To Realize That Weakness, Too, Corrupts. Power Corrupts The Few, While Weakness Corrupts The Many. Hatred, Malice, Rudeness, Intolerance, And Suspicion Are The Faults Of Weakness. The Resentment Of The Weak Does Not Spring From Any Injustice Done To Them But From Their Sense Of Inadequacy And Impotence. We Cannot Win The Weak By Sharing Our Wealth With Them. They Feel Our Generosity As Oppression.

We Are Made Kind By Being Kind.

Starting Out From The Fact That The Frustrated Predominate Among The Early Adherents Of All Mass Movements And That They Usually Join Of Their Own Accord, It Is Assumed: 1) That Frustration Of Itself, Without Any Proselytizing Prompting From The Outside, Can Generate Most Of The Peculiar Characteristics Of The True Believer; 2) That An Effective Technique Of Conversion Consists Basically In The Inculcation And Fixation Of Proclivities And Responses Indigenous To The Frustrated Mind.

The Chief Difference Between Me And Others Is That I Have Plenty Of Time Not Only Because I Am Without A Multitude Of Responsibilities And Without Daily Tasks, Which Demand Attention: But Also Because I Am Basically Without Ambition. Neither The Present Nor The Future Has Claims On Me.

Propaganda Does Not Deceive People; It Merely Helps Them To Deceive Themselves.

We Used To Think That Revolutions Are The Cause Of Change. Actually It Is The Other Way Around: Change Prepares The Ground For Revolution.

In Man's Life, The Absence Of An Essential Component Usually Leads To The Adoption Of A Substitute. The Substitute Is Usually Embraced With Vehemence And Extremism, For We Have To Convince Ourselves That What We Took As Second Choice Is The Best There Ever Was. Thus Blind Faith Is To A Considerable Extent A Substitute For The Lost Faith In Ourselves; Insatiable Desire A Substitute For Hope; Accumulation A Substitute For Growth; Fervent Hustling A Substitute For Purposeful Action; And Pride A Substitute For An Unattainable Self-respect.

It Is Always Safe To Assume That People Are More Subtle And Less Sensitive Than They Seem.

In Human Affairs Every Solution Serves Only To Sharpen The Problem, To Show Us More Clearly What We Are Up Against. There Are No Final Solutions.

The Pleasure We Derive From Doing Favors Is Partly In The Feeling It Gives Us That We Are Not Altogether Worthless. It Is A Pleasant Surprise To Ourselves.

The Superficiality Of Many Is A Result Of Deep Fears. It Takes Spare Time To Think Things Out; It Takes Free Time To Mature. People In A Hurry May Not Think Well Or Mature Well. The Next Best Is A State Of Perpetual Puerility.

We Do Not Really Feel Grateful Toward Those Who Make Our Dreams Come True; They Ruin Our Dreams.

A Successful Social Technique Consists Perhaps In Finding Unobjectionable Means For Individual Self-assertion.

A Heresy Can Spring Only From A System That Is In Full Vigor.

There Can Be No Mass Movement Without Some Deliberate Misrepresentation Of Facts.

Misrepresentation

A Ruling Intelligentsia, Whether In Europe, Asia Or Africa, Treats The Masses As Raw Material To Be Experimented On, Processed, And Wasted At Will.

The Chemistry Of Dissatisfaction Is As The Chemistry Of Some Marvelously Potent Tar. In It Are The Building Stones Of Explosives, Stimulants, Poisons, Opiates, Perfumes And Stenches.

A Man's Soul Is Pierced As It Were With Holes, And As His Longings Flow Through Each They Are Transmuted Into Something Specific.

The Future Belongs To The Learners-not The Knowers.

Marriage Has For Women Many Equivalents Of Joining A Mass Movement. It Offers Them A New Purpose In Life, A New Future And A New Identity (a New Name). The Boredom Of Spinsters And Of Women Who Can No Longer Find Joy And Fulfillment In Marriage Stems From An Awareness Of A Barren, Spoiled Life. By Embracing A Holy Cause And Dedicating Their Energies And Substance To Its Advancement, They Find A New Life Full Of Purpose And Meaning.

To Dispose A Soul To Action We Must Upset Its Equilibrium.

We Are More Prone To Generalize The Bad Than The Good. We Assume That The Bad Is More Potent And Contagious.

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Robinson Jeffers

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

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