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Conservatism Is Sometimes A Symptom Of Sterility. Those Who Have Nothing In Them That Can Grow And Develop Must Cling To What They Have In Beliefs, Ideas And Possessions. The Sterile Radical, Too, Is Basically Conservative. He Is Afraid To Let Go Of The Ideas And Beliefs He Picked Up In His Youth Lest His Life Be Seen As Empty And Wasted.

-Eric Hoffer

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Conservatism Is Sometimes A

Eric Hoffer

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Conservatism Is Sometimes A Symptom Of Sterility. Those Who Have Nothing In Them That Can Grow And Develop Must Cling To What They Have In Beliefs, Ideas And Possessions. The Sterile Radical, Too, Is Basically Conservative. He Is Afraid To Let Go Of The Ideas And Beliefs He Picked Up In His Youth Lest His Life Be Seen As Empty And Wasted.

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He Who Has Nothing And Wants Something Is Less Frustrated Than He Who Has Something And Wants More.

Actual Creativeness Is A Matter Of Moments. One Has To Piece Together The Minute Grains To Make A Lump. And It Is So Easy To Miss The Momentary Flashes, It Is Like Sluicing In Placer Mining. He Who Lets The Flakes Float By Has Nothing To Show For His Trouble.

In Human Affairs, The Best Stimulus For Running Ahead Is To Have Something We Must Run From.

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

Self-esteem And Self-contempt Have Specific Odors; They Can Be Smelled.

Compassion Alone Stands Apart From The Continuous Traffic Between Good And Evil Proceeding Within Us.

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

A Low Capacity For Getting Along With Those Near Us Often Goes Hand In Hand With A High Receptivity To The Idea Of The Brotherhood Of Men.

Brotherhood Of Man

The Passion For Equality Is Partly A Passion For Anonymity: To Be One Thread Of The Many Which Make Up A Tunic; One Thread Not Distinguishable From The Others. No One Can Then Point Us Out, Measure Us Against Others And Expose Our Inferiority.

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.

Naivete In Grownups Is Often Charming; But When Coupled With Vanity It Is Indistinguishable From Stupidity.

Unless A Man Has The Talents To Make Something Of Himself, Freedom Is An Irksome Burden.

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

A Great Man's Greatest Good Luck Is To Die At The Right Time.

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

Modern Man Is Weighed Down More By The Burden Of Responsibility Than By The Burden Of Sin. We Think Him More A Savior Who Shoulders Our Responsibilities Than Him Who Shoulders Our Sins. If Instead Of Making Decisions We Have But To Obey And Do Our Duty, We Feel It As A Sort Of Salvation.

There Are Many Who Find A Good Alibi Far More Attractive Than An Achievement.

Every Successful Person Has Had Failures But Repeated Failure Is No Guarantee Of Eventual Success

How Frighteningly Few Are The Persons Whose Death Would Spoil Our Appetite And Make The World Seem Empty.

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.

Self-righteousness Is A Loud Din Raised To Drown The Voice Of Guilt Within Us.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Our Frustration Is Greater When We Have Much And Want More Than When We Have Nothing And Want Some. We Are Less Dissatisfied When We Lack Many Things Than When We Seem To Lack But One Thing.

Should Americans Begin To Hate Foreigners Wholeheartedly, It Will Be An Indication That They Have Lost Confidence In Their Own Way Of Life.

The Devil Personifies Not The Nature That Is Around Us But The Nature That Is Within Us- The Infinitely Ferocious And Cunning Prehuman Creature That Is Still Within Us, Sealed In The Subconscious Cellars Of The Psyche.

Unpredictability, Too, Can Become Monotonous.

Unpredictability

When You Automate An Industry You Modernize It; When You Automate A Life You Primitivize It.

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.

Our Doubts About Ourselves Cannot Be Banished Except By Working At That Which Is The One And Only Thing We Know We Ought To Do. Other People's Assertions Cannot Silence The Howling Dirge Within Us. It Is Our Talents Rusting Unused Within Us That Secrete The Poison Of Self-doubt Into Our Bloodstream.

The Remarkable Thing Is That It Is The Crowded Life That Is Most Easily Remembered. A Life Full Of Turns, Achievements, Disappointments, Surprises, And Crises Is A Life Full Of Landmarks. The Empty Life Has Even Its Few Details Blurred, And Cannot Be Remembered With Certainty.

When Cowardice Becomes A Fashion Its Adherents Are Without Number, And It Masquerades As Forbearance, Reasonableness And Whatnot.

Absolute Faith Corrupts As Absolutely As Absolute Power.

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.

Absolute Power Turns Its Possessors Not Into A God But An Anti-god. For God Turned Clay Into Men, While The Absolute Despot Turns Men Into Clay.

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.

If Anybody Asks Me What I Have Accomplished, I Will Say All I Have Accomplished Is That I Have Written A Few Good Sentences.

Capitalism Is At Its Liberating Best In A Noncapitalist Environment. The Crypto-businessman Is The True Revolutionary In A Communist Country.

We Have Perhaps A Natural Fear Of Ends. We Would Rather Be Always On The Way Than Arrive. Given The Means, We Hang On To Them And Often Forget The Ends.

What Merit There Is In My Thinking Is Derived From Two Peculiarities: (1) My Inability To Be Familiar With Anything. I Simply Can't Take Things For Granted. (2) My Endless Patience. I Assume That The Only Way To Find An Answer Is To Hang On Long Enough And Keep Groping.

It Is Startling To Realize How Much Unbelief Is Necessary To Make Belief Possible.

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.

Intolerance Is The ''do Not Touch'' Sign On Something That Cannot Bear Touching. We Do Not Mind Having Our Hair Ruffled, But We Will Not Tolerate Any Familiarity With The Toupee Which Covers Our Baldness.

The Hardest Thing To Cope With Is Not Selfishness Or Vanity Or Deceitfulness, But Sheer Stupidity.

Vaguely At First, Then More Distinctly, I Realized That Man Is An Eternal Stranger On This Planet.

To Some, Freedom Means The Opportunity To Do What They Want To Do; To Most It Means Not To Do What They Do Not Want To Do. It Is Perhaps True That Those Who Can Grow Will Feel Free Under Any Condition.

The Greatest Weariness Comes From Work Not Done.

A Free Society Is As Much A Threat To The Intellectual's Sense Of Worth As An Automated Economy Is To The Workingman's Sense Of Worth. Any Social Order That Can Function With A Minimum Of Leadership Will Be Anathema To The Intellectual.

It Takes A Vice To Check A Vice, And Virtue Is The By-product Of A Stalemate Between Opposite Vices.

Wise Living Consists Perhaps Less In Acquiring Good Habits Than In Acquiring As Few Habits As Possible.

They Who Lack Talent Expect Things To Happen Without Effort. They Ascribe Failure To A Lack Of Inspiration Or Ability, Or To Misfortune, Rather Than To Insufficient Application. At The Core Of Every True Talent There Is An Awareness Of The Difficulties Inherent In Any Achievement, And The Confidence That By Persistence And Patience Something Worthwhile Will Be Realized. Thus Talent Is A Species Of Vigor.

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.

The Great Crimes Of The Twentieth Century Were Committed Not By Money-grubbing Capitalists But By Dedicated Idealists. Lenin, Stalin, And Hitler Were Contemptuous Of Money. The Passage From The Nineteenth To The Twentieth Century Has Been A Passage From Considerations Of Money To Considerations Of Power.

The Intellectuals And The Young, Booted And Spurred, Feel Themselves Born To Ride Us.

The Real Antichrist Is He Who Turns The Wine Of An Original Idea Into The Water Of Mediocrity.

A Man By Himself Is In Bad Company.

There Is Apparently No Surer Way Of Turning A Thing Into Its Opposite Than By Exaggerating It

The Game Of History Is Usually Played By The Best And The Worst Over The Heads Of The Majority In The Middle.

When People Are Bored It Is Primarily With Themselves.

It Is A Perplexing And Unpleasant Truth That When Men Already Have "something Worth Fighting For,they Do Not Feel Like Fighting.

It Is The Stretched Soul That Makes Music, And Souls Are Stretched By The Pull Of Opposites-opposite Bents, Tastes, Yearnings, Loyalties. Where There Is No Polarity-where Energies Flow Smoothly In One Direction-there Will Be Much Doing But No Music.

Children Are The Keys Of Paradise.

A Grievance Is Most Poignant When Almost Redressed.

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.

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.

Unless A Man Has Talents To Make Something Of Himself, Freedom Is An Irksome Burden. Of What Avail Is Freedom To Choose If The Self Be Ineffectual? We Join A Mass Movement To Escape Individual Responsibility, Or, In The Words Of The Ardent Young Nazi, "to Be Free From Freedom."

However Much We Talk Of The Inexorable Laws Governing The Life Of Individuals And Of Societies, We Remain At The Bottom Convinced That In Human Affairs Everything In More Or Less Fortuitous. We Do Not Even Believe In The Inevitability Of Our Own Death. Hence The Difficulty Of Deciphering The Present, Of Detecting The Seeds Of Things To Come As They Germinate Before Our Eyes. We Are Not Attuned To Seeing The Inevitable.

The Nature Of A Society Is Largely Determined By The Direction In Which Talent And Ambition Flow - By The Tilt Of The Social Landscape.

The Fear Of Becoming A 'has-been' Keeps Some People From Becoming Anything.

A Dissenting Minority Feels Free Only When It Can Impose Its Will On The Majority: What It Abominates Most Is The Dissent Of The Majority.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Individual Who Has To Justify His Existence By His Own Efforts Is In Eternal Bondage To Himself.

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.

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.

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.

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

What Pascal Said Of An Effective Religion Is True Of Any Effective Doctrine: It Must Be "contrary To Nature, To Common Sense And To Pleasure.

Even The Sober Desire For Progress Is Sustained By Faith—faith In The Intrinsic Goodness Of Human Nature And In The Omnipotence Of Science. It Is A Defiant And Blasphemous Faith, Not Unlike That Held By The Men Who Set Out To Build A "city And A Tower, Whose Top May Reach Unto Heaven" And Who Believed That "nothing Will Be Restrained From Them, Which They Have Imagined To Do.

The Most Effective Way To Silence Our Guilty Conscience Is To Convince Ourselves And Others That Those We Have Sinned Against Are Indeed Depraved Creatures, Deserving Every Punishment, Even Extermination. We Cannot Pity Those We Have Wronged, Nor Can We Be Indifferent Toward Them. We Must Hate And Persecute Them Or Else Leave The Door Open To Self-contempt.

If The Communists Win Europe And A Large Part Of The World, It Will Not Be Because They Know How To Stir Up Discontent Or How To Infect People With Hatred, But Because They Know How To Preach Hope.

The Ratio Between Supervisory And Producing Personnel Is Always Highest Where The Intellectuals Are In Power. In A Communist Country It Takes Half The Population To Supervise The Other Half.

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

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.

It Almost Seems That Nobody Can Hate America As Much As Native Americans. America Needs New Immigrants To Love And Cherish It.

Native American

The Hardest Arithmetic To Master Is That Which Enables Us To Count Our Blessings.

Rudeness Is The Weak Man's Limitation Of Strength.

The Aspiration Toward Freedom Is The Most Essentially Human Of All Human Manifestations.

It Would Be Difficult To Exaggerate The Degree To Which We Are Influenced By Those We Influence.

First Something Is A Great Idea, Then It Becomes A Cause, Then It Becomes A Business And Finally It Becomes A Racket.

In A Trader-dominated Society, The Scribe Is Usually Kept Out Of The Management Of Affairs, But It Given A More Or Less Free Hand In The Cultural Field. By Frustrating The Scribe's Craving For Commanding Action, The Trader Draws Upon Himself The Scribe's Wrath And Scorn.

The Main Effect Of A Real Revolution Is Perhaps That It Sweeps Away Those Who Do Not Know How To Wish, And Brings To The Front Men With Insatiable Appetites For Action, Power And All That The World Has To Offer.

To The Creative Individual All Experience Is Seminal-all Events Are Equidistant From New Ideasand Insights.

Men Weary As Much Of Not Doing The Things They Want To Do As Of Doing The Things They Do Not Want To Do.

There Is Probably An Element Of Malice In Our Readiness To Overestimate People - We Are, As It Were, Laying Up For Ourselves The Pleasure Of Later Cutting Them Down To Size.

It Is A Strange Thing That Both The Injurer And The Injured, The Sinner And He Who Is Sinned Against, Should Find In The Mass Movement An Escape From A Blemished Life.

Love-making Is Radical, While Marriage Is Conservative.

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

Social Improvement Is Attained More Readily By A Concern With The Quality Of Results Than With The Purity Of Motives.

It Is Our Talents Rusting Unused Within Us That Secrete The Poison Of Self-doubt Into Our Bloodstream.

The Atheist Is A Religious Person. He Believes In Atheism As Though It Were A New Religion. According To Renan, "the Day After That On Which The World Should No Longer Believe In God, Atheists Would Be The Wretchedest Of All Men."

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.

Rudeness Luxuriates In The Absence Of Self-respect.

Propaganda ... Serves More To Justify Ourselves Than To Convince Others; And The More Reason We Have To Feel Guilty, The More Fervent Our Propaganda.

We Have To Adjust Ourselves, And Every Radical Adjustment Is A Crisis In Self-esteem: We Undergo A Test, We Have To Prove Ourselves.

It Is Apparently Vital That We Should Be In The Dark About Ourselves Not To Be Clear About Our Intentions, Fears, And Hopes. There Is A Stubborn Effort In Us To Set Up A Compact Screen Between Consciousness And The Self.

Nowhere At Present Is There Such A Measureless Loathing Of Their Country By Educated People As In America.

Often, The Thing We Pursue Most Passionately Is But A Substitute For The One Thing We Really Want And Cannot Have.

A Good Sentence Is A Key . It Unlocks The Mind Of The Reader.

Men Of Thought Seldom Work Well Together, Whereas Between Men Of Action There Is Usually An Easy Camaraderie.

However Different The Holy Causes People Die For, They Perhaps Die Basically For The Same Thing.

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.

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

What Are We When We Are Alone? Some, When They Are Alone, Cease To Exist.

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

It Is The Individual Only Who Is Timeless. Societies, Cultures, And Civilizations -- Past And Present -- Are Often Incomprehensible To Outsiders, But The Individual's Hungers, Anxieties, Dreams, And Preoccupations Have Remained Unchanged Through The Millenia.

It Is The Fate Of Every Great Achievement To Be Pounced Upon By Pedants And Imitators Who Drain It Of Life And Turn It Into An Orthodoxy Which Stifles All Stirrings Of Originality.

Successful Action Tends To Become An End In Itself.

It Is Easier To Love Humanity As A Whole Than To Love One's Neighbor.

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

The Necessary Has Never Been Man's Top Priority. The Passionate Pursuit Of The Nonessential And The Extravagant Is One Of The Chief Traits Of Human Uniqueness. Unlike Other Forms Of Life, Man's Greatest Exertions Are Made In The Pursuit Not Of Necessities But Of Superfluities.

In Running Away From Ourselves We Either Fall On Our Neighbor's Shoulder Or Fly At His Throat.

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

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

A Compilation Of What Outstanding People Said Or Wrote At The Age Of 20 Would Make A Collection Of Asinine Pronouncements.

Action Can Give Us The Feeling Of Being Useful, But Only Words Can Give Us A Sense Of Weight And Purpose.

Nothing So Bolsters Our Self-confidence And Reconciles Us With Ourselves As The Continuous Ability To Create; To See Things Grow And Develop Under Our Hand, Day In, Day Out.

Self Confidence

It Is Probably True That Business Corrupts Everything It Touches. It Corrupts Politics, Sports, Literature, Art, Labor Unions And So On. But Business Also Corrupts And Undermines Monolithic Totalitarianism. Capitalism Is At Its Liberating Best In A Noncapitalist Environment.

There Is Sublime Thieving In All Giving. Someone Gives Us All He Has And We Are His.

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.

In A Time Of Drastic Change, It Is The Learners Who Inherit The Future.

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

To Become Different From What We Are, We Must Have Some Awareness Of What We Are.

No One Has A Right To Happiness.

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

The Craving To Change The World Is Perhaps A Reflection Of The Craving To Change Ourselves.

Changing The World

We Are Made Kind By Being Kind.

The Education Explosion Is Producing A Vast Number Of People Who Want To Live Significant, Important Lives But Lack The Ability To Satisfy This Craving For Importance By Individual Achievement. The Country Is Being Swamped With Nobodies Who Want To Be Somebodies.

Our Sense Of Power Is More Vivid When We Break A Man's Spirit Than When We Win His Heart.

It Is Not Actual Suffering But The Taste Of Better Things Which Excites People To Revolt.

To Wrong Those We Hate Is To Add Fuel To Our Hatred. Conversely, To Treat An Enemy With Magnanimity Is To Blunt Our Hatred For Him.

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

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

Retribution Often Means That We Eventually Do To Ourselves What We Have Done Unto Others.

To Lose One's Life Is But To Lose The Present; And, Clearly, To Lose A Defiled, Worthless Present Is Not To Lose Much.

Far More Critical Than What We Know Or What We Don't Know Is What We Don't Want To Know.

We Are Unified Both By Hating In Common And By Being Hated In Common.

Add A Few Drops Of Venom To A Half Truth And You Have An Absolute Truth.

We Can Be Satisfied With Moderate Confidence In Ourselves And With A Moderately Good Opinion Of Ourselves, But The Faith We Have In A Holy Cause Has To Be Extravagant And Uncompromising.

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

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

Exaggeration Is

Unlimited Opportunities Can Be As Potent A Cause Of Frustration As A Paucity Or Lack Of Opportunities.

Youth Itself Is A Talent, A Perishable Talent.

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.

Fair Play With Others Is Primarily The Practice Of Not Blaming Them For Anything That Is Wrong With Us. We Tend To Rub Our Guilty Conscience Against Others The Way We Wipe Dirty Fingers On A Rag. This Is As Evil A Misuse Of Others As The Practice Of Exploitation.

It Is A Juvenile Notion That A Society Needs A Lofty Purpose And A Shining Vision To Achieve Much. Both In The Market Place And On The Battlefield Men Who Set Their Hearts On Toys Have Often Displayed Unequal Initiative And Drive. And One Must Be Ignorant Of The Creative Process To Look For A Close Correspondence Between Motive And Achievement In The World Of Thought And Imagination.

We See Through Others Only When We See Through Ourselves.

When The Greeks Said, Whom The Gods Love Die Young, They Probably Meant, As Lord Sankey Suggested, That Those Favored By The Gods Stay Young Till The Day They Die; Young And Playful.

The Link Between Ideas And Action Is Rarely Direct. There Is Almost Always An Intermediate Step In Which The Idea Is Overcome.

Those Who Are In Love With The Present Can Be Cruel And Corrupt But Not Genuinely Vicious. They Cannot Be Methodically And Consistently Ruthless.

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

We Can Be Absolutely Certain Only About Things We Do Not Understand.

The Desire To Belong Is Partly A Desire To Lose Oneself.

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

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.

Our Passionate Preoccupation With The Sky, The Stars, And A God Somewhere In Outer Space Is A Homing Impulse. We Are Drawn Back To Where We Came From.

Originality Is Deliberate And Forced, And Partakes Of The Nature Of A Protest.

Man Is Eminently A Storyteller. His Search For A Purpose, A Cause, An Ideal, A Mission And The Like Is Largely A Search For A Plot And A Pattern In The Development Of His Life Story - A Story That Is Basically Without Meaning Or Pattern.

It Is Also Plausible That Those Movements With The Greatest Inner Contradiction And Between Profession And Practice - That Is To Say With A Strong Feeling Of Guilt - Are Likely To Be The Most Fervent In Imposing Their Faith On Others.

The Paleolithic Hunters Who Painted The Unsurpassed Animal Murals On The Ceiling Of The Cave At Altamira Had Only Rudimentary Tools. Art Is Older Than Production For Use, And Play Older Than Work. Man Was Shaped Less By What He Had To Do Than By What He Did In Playful Moments. It Is The Child In Man That Is The Source Of His Uniqueness And Creativeness, And The Playground Is The Optimal Milieu For The Unfolding Of His Capacities.

Resistance, Whether To One's Appetites Or To The Ways Of The World, Is A Chief Factor In The Shaping Of Character.

I Always Held My Flower In A Clenched Fist.

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

America Is Still The Best Country For The Common Man -- White Or Black ... If He Can't Make It Here He Won't Make It Anywhere Else.

There Is No Doubt That In Exchanging A Self-centered For A Selfless Life We Gain Enormously In Self-esteem. The Vanity Of The Selfless, Even Those Who Practice Utmost Humility, Is Boundless.

It Was The Craving To Be A One And Only People Which Impelled The Ancient Hebrews To Invent A One And Only God Whose One And Only People They Were To Be.

Self-righteousness Is A Manifestation Of Self-contempt.

A Multitude Of Words Is Probably The Most Formidable Means Of Blurring And Obscuring Thought. There Is No Thought, However Momentous, That Cannot Be Expressed Lucidly In 200 Words.

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.

Someone Who Thinks The World Is Always Cheating Him Is Right. He Is Missing That Wonderful Feeling Of Trust In Someone Or Something.

It Is The Pull Of Opposite Poles That Stretches Souls. And Only Stretched Souls Make Music.

The Pre-human Creature From Which Man Evolved Was Unlike Any Other Living Thing In Its Malicious Viciousness Toward Its Own Kind. Humanization Was Not A Leap Forward But A Groping Toward Survival.

Power Corrupts The Few, While Weakness Corrupts The Many.

More Significant Than The Fact That Poets Write Abstrusely, Painters Paint Abstractly, And Composers Compose Unintelligible Music Is That People Should Admire What They Cannot Understand; Indeed, Admire That Which Has No Meaning Or Principle.

The Well Adjusted Make Poor Prophets. A Pleasant Existence Blinds Us To The Possibilities Of Drastic Change. We Cling To What We Call Our Common Sense, Our Practical Point Of View. Actually, These Are Names For An All-absorbing Familiarity With Things As They Are. . . . Thus It Happens That When The Times Become Unhinged, It Is The Practical People Who Are Caught Unaware . . . Still Clinging To Things That No Longer Exist.

We Need Not Only A Purpose In Life To Give Meaning To Our Existence But Also Something To Give Meaning To Our Suffering. We Need As Much Something To Suffer For As Something To Live For.

Facts Are Counterrevolutionary.

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

It Is The Acquisition Of Skills In Particular, Irrespective Of Their Utility, That Is Potent In Making Life Meaningful. Since Man Has No Inborn Skills, The Survival Of The Species Has Depended On The Ability To Acquire And Perfect Skills. Hence The Mastery Of Skills Is A Uniquely Human Activity And Yields Deep Satisfaction.

Glory Is Largely A Theatrical Concept. There Is No Striving For Glory Without A Vivid Awareness Of An Audience.

It Is Often The Failure Who Is The Pioneer In New Lands, New Undertakings, And New Forms Of Expression.

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

The Creative Mind Is The Playful Mind. Philosophy Is The Play And Dance Of Ideas.

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