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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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Every Device Employed To

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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Wordiness Is A Sickness Of American Writing. Too Many Words Dilute And Blur Ideas.

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

Excesses Are Essentially Gestures. It Is Easy To Be Extremely Cruel, Magnanimous, Humble Or Self-sacrificing When We See Ourselves As Actors In A Performance.

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.

There Is Perhaps No Better Way Of Measuring The Natural Endowment Of A Soul Than By Its Ability To Transmute Dissatisfaction Into A Creative Impulse.

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.

Proselytizing Is More A Passionate Search For Something Not Yet Found Than A Desire To Bestow Upon The World Something We Already Have. It Is A Search For A Final And Irrefutable Demonstration That Our Absolute Truth Is Indeed The One And Only Truth. The Proselytizing Fanatic Strengthens His Own Faith By Converting Others.

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

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

Craving, Not Having, Is The Mother Of A Reckless Giving Of Oneself.

Man Was Nature's Mistake She Neglected To Finish Him And She Has Never Ceased Paying For Her Mistake.

It Needs Some Intelligence To Be Truly Selfish. The Unintelligent Can Only Be Self-righteous.

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

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.

It Is Easier To Love Humanity As A Whole Than To Love One's Neighbor. ... Some Of The Worst Tyrannies Of Our Day Genuinely Are "vowed" To The Service Of Mankind, Yet Can Function Only By Pitting Neighbor Against Neighbor. The All-seeing Eye Of A Totalitarian Regime Is Usually The Watchful Eye Of The Next-door Neighbor. In A Communist State Love Of Neighbor May Be Classed As Counter-revolutionary.

It Is Part Of The Formidableness Of A Genuine Mass Movement That The Self-sacrifice It Promotes Includes Also A Sacrifice Of Some Of The Moral Sense, Which Cramps And Restrains Our Nature.

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

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.

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.

Without A Sense Of Proportion There Can Be Neither Good Taste Nor Genuine Intelligence, Nor Perhaps Moral Integrity.

You Can Discover What Your Enemy Fears Most By Observing The Means He Uses To Frighten You.

Disappointment Is A Sort Of Bankruptcy - The Bankruptcy Of A Soul That Expends Too Much In Hope And Expectation.

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.

The Autonomous Individual, Striving To Realize Himself And Prove His Worth, Has Created All That Is Great In Literature, Art, Music, Science And Technology. The Autonomous Individual, Also, When He Can Neither Realize Himself Nor Justify His Existence By His Own Efforts, Is A Breeding Call Of Frustration, And The Seed Of The Convulsions Which Shake Our World To Its Foundations.

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

I Could Never Figure Out Or Probably Did Not Take The Trouble To Figure Out What The Great Philosophical Problems Are About. The Momentous Statements I Come Across Are At Best A Storm In A Teacup. There Are Quite A Number Of People Who Have A Vested Interest In The Stuff, Make A Noble Living Out Of It, And They Conspire With One Another To Keep It Alive.

There Is No Reason Why The Profoundest Thoughts Should Not Make Easy And Exciting Reading. A Profound Thought Is An Exciting Thing As Exciting As A Detective's Deductions Or Hunches. The Simpler The Words In Which A Thought Is Expressed The More Stimulating Its Effect.

Nothing Comes Easily. My Work Smells Of Sweat.

When We Do Not Do The One Thing We Ought To Do, We Have No Time For Anything Else - We Are The Busiest People In The World.

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.

We Clamor For Equality Chiefly In Matters In Which We Ourselves Cannot Hope To Obtain Excellence.

I Always Held My Flower In A Clenched Fist.

Power Corrupts The Few, While Weakness Corrupts The Many.

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.

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

To Have A Grievance Is To Have A Purpose In Life. It Not Infrequently Happens That Those Who Hunger For Hope Give Their Allegiance To Him Who Offers Them A Grievance.

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 Seems That When We Are Oppressed By The Knowledge Of Our Worthlessness We Do Not See Ourselves As Lower Than Some And Higher Than Others, But As Lower Than The Lowest Of Mankind. We Hate Then The Whole World, And We Would Pour Our Wrath Upon The Whole Of Creation.

Glory Is Largely A Theatrical Concept. There Is No Striving For Glory Without A Vivid Awareness Of An Audience... The Desire To Escape Or Camouflage Their Unsatisfactory Selves Develops In The Frustrated A Facility For Pretending -- For Making A Show -- And Also A Readiness To Identify Themselves Wholly With An Imposing Spectacle.

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

Absolute Power Corrupts Even When Exercised For Humane Purposes. The Benevolent Despot Who Sees Himself As A Shepherd Of The People Still Demands From Others The Submissiveness Of Sheep. The Taint Inherent In Absolute Power Is Not Its Inhumanity But Its Anti-humanity.

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

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.

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

The Burning Conviction That We Have A Holy Duty Towards Others Is Often A Way Of Attaching Our Drowning Selves To A Passing Raft. What Looks Like A Giving Hand Is Often A Holding On For Dear Life. Take Away Our Holy Duties And You Leave Our Lives Puny And Meaningless. 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.

Faith In Humanity, In Posterity, In The Destiny Of One's Religion, Nation, Race, Party Or Family-what Is It But The Visualization Of That Eternal Something To Which We Attach The Self That Is About To Be Annihilated?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Love-making Is Radical, While Marriage Is Conservative.

Creativity Is The Ability To Introduce Order Into The Randomness Of Nature.

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

Quite Often The Social Doctors Become Part Of The Disease.

Free Men Are Aware Of The Imperfection Inherent In Human Affairs, And They Are Willing To Fight And Die For That Which Is Not Perfect.

A Preoccupation With The Future Not Only Prevents Us From Seeing The Present As It Is But Often Prompts Us To Rearrange The Past.

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.

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.

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

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.

Unless A Man Has The Talents To Make Something Of Himself, Freedom Is An Irksome Burden. We Join A Mass Movement To Escape From Individual Responsibility, Or, In The Words Of An Ardent Young Nazi, To Be Free From Freedom. It Was Not Sheer Hypocrisy When The Rank-and-file Nazis Declared Themselves Not Guilty Of All The Enormities They Had Committed. They Considered Themselves Cheated And Maligned When Made To Shoulder Responsibility For Obeying Orders. Had They Not Joined The Nazi Movement In Order To Be Free From Responsibility?

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.

There Is In Even The Most Selfish Passion A Large Element Of Self-abnegation. It Is Startling To Realize That What We Call Extreme Self-seeking Is Actually Self-renunciation. The Miser, Health Addict, Glory Chaser And Their Like Are Not Far Behind The Selfless In The Exercise Of Self-sacrifice.

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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.

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.

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

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.

There Are Many Who Find A Good Alibi Far More Attractive Than An Achievement. For An Achievement Does Not Settle Anything Permanently. We Still Have To Prove Our Worth Anew Each Day; We Have To Prove That We Are As Good Today As We Were Yesterday. But When We Have A Valid Alibi For Not Achieving Anything We Are Fixed, So To Speak, For Life.

The Impression Somehow Prevails That The True Believer, Particularly The Religious Individual, Is A Humble Person. The Truth Is That The Surrendering And Humbling Of The Self Breeds Pride And Arrogance.

It Is A Talent Of The Weak To Persuade Themselves That They Suffer For Something When They Suffer From Something; That They Are Showing The Way When They Are Running Away; That They See The Light When They Feel The Heat; That They Are Chosen When They Are Shunned.

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.

All Mass Movements Avail Themselves Of Action As A Means Of Unification. The Conflicts A Mass Movement Seeks And Incites Serve Not Only To Down Its Enemies But Also To Strip Its Followers Of Their Distinct Individuality And Render Them More Soluble In The Collective Medium.

People With A Sense Of Fulfillment Think It Is A Good World And Would Like To Conserve It As It Is, While The Frustrated Favor Radical Change.

There Is Always A Chance That He Who Sets Himself Up As His Brother's Keeper Will End Up By Being His Jail-keeper.

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.

The Savior Who Wants To Turn Men Into Angels Is As Much A Hater Of Human Nature As The Totalitarian Despot Who Wants To Turn Them Into Puppets.

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

Somewhere Between The Angels And The French Lies The Rest Of Humanity.

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.

Words Have Ruined More Souls Than Any Devil's Agency.

The Desire To Be Different From The People We Live With Is Sometimes The Result Of Our Rejection- Real Or Imagined- By Them.

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

However Much We Guard Against It, We Tend To Shape Ourselves In The Image Others Have Of Us.

The Future Belongs To The Learners-not The Knowers.

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

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."

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.

Fear Comes From Uncertainty. When We Are Absolutely Certain, Whether Of Our Worth Or Worthlessness, We Are Almost Impervious To Fear. Thus A Feeling Of Utter Unworthiness Can Be A Source Of Courage.

Perhaps A Modern Society Can Remain Stable Only By Eliminating Adolescence, By Giving Its Young, From The Age Of Ten, The Skills, Responsibilities, And Rewards Of Grownups, And Opportunities For Action In All Spheres Of Life. Adolescence Should Be A Time Of Useful Action, While Book Learning And Scholarship Should Be A Preoccupation Of Adults.

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

The Genuine Creator Creates Something That Has A Life Of Its Own, Something That Can Exist And Function Without Him. This Is True Not Only Of The Writer, Artist And Scientist, But Of Creators In Other Fields.with The Noncreative It Is The Other Way Around: In Whatever They Do, They Arrange Things So That They Themselves Become Indispensable.

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

The Ideal Of Self-advancement Which The Civilizing West Offers To Backward Populations Brings With It The Plague Of Individual Frustration. All The Advantages Brought By The West Are Ineffectual Substitutes For The Sheltering And Soothing Anonymity Of Communal Existence.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Purpose Of Philosophers Is To Show People What Is Right Under Their Noses.

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 Renaissance Was A Time Of Mercenary Soldiers, Ours Is A Time Of Mercenary Labor.

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

There Is No Alienation That A Little Power Will Not Cure.

The Monstrous Evils Of The Twentieth Century Have Shown Us That The Greediest Money Grubbers Are Gentle Doves Compared With Money-hating Wolves Like Lenin, Stalin, And Hitler, Who In Less Than Three Decades Killed Or Maimed Nearly A Hundred Million Men, Women, And Children And Brought Untold Suffering To A Large Portion Of Mankind.

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

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

Though Dissenters Seem To Question Everything In Sight, They Are Actually Bundles Of Dusty Answers And Never Conceived A New Question. What Offends Us Most In The Literature Of Dissent Is The Lack Of Hesitation And Wonder.

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.

...the Majority Of People Cannot Endure The Bareness And Futility Of Their Lives Unless They Have Some Ardent Dedication, Or Some Passionate Pursuit In Which They Can Lose Themselves.

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

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

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

A Peculiar Side Of Credulity Is That It Is Often Joined With A Proneness To Imposture. The Association Of Believing And Lying Is Not Characteristic Solely Of Children. They Inability Or Unwillingness To See Things As They Are Promotes Both Gullibility And Charlatanism.

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.

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.

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

Man Staggers Through Life Yapped At By His Reason, Pulled And Shoved By His Appetites, Whispered To By Fears, Beckoned By Hopes. Small Wonder That What He Craves Most Is Self-forgetting.

It Is The Awareness Of Unfulfilled Desires Which Gives A Nation The Feeling That It Has A Mission And A Destiny.

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

...that Genius Is A Rare Exception (:) It's Not True. Talent And Genius Have Been Wasted On Enormous Scale Throughout Our History; This Is All I Know For Sure.

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

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

Passionate Intensity May Serve As A Substitute For Confidence.

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.

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.

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.

Language Was Invented To Ask Questions. Answers May Be Given By Grunts And Gestures, But Questions Must Be Spoken. Humanness Came Of Age When Man Asked The First Question. Social Stagnation Results Not From A Lack Of Answers But From The Absence Of The Impulse To Ask Questions.

The Trouble Is Not Chiefly That Our Universities Are Unfit For Students But That Many Present-day Students Are Unfit For Universities.

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

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.

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

The Nineteenth Century Planted The Words Which The Twentieth Century Ripened Into The Atrocities Of Stalin And Hitler. There Is Hardly An Atrocity Committed In The Twentieth Century That Was Not Foreshadowed Or Even Advocated By Some Noble Man Of Words In The Nineteenth.

Atrocities Committed

One Might Equate Growing Up With A Mistrust Of Words. A Mature Person Trusts His Eyes More Than His Ears. Irrationality Often Manifests Itself In Upholding The Word Against The Evidence Of The Eyes. Children, Savages And True Believers Remember Far Less What They Have Seen Than What They Have Heard.

Mass Movements Do Not Usually Rise Until The Prevailing Order Has Been Discredited.

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.

The Readiness To Praise Others Indicates A Desire For Excellence And Perhaps An Ability To Realize It.

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.

The Technique Of A Mass Movement Aims To Infect People With A Malady And Then Offer The Movement As A Cure.

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

Practically All Writers And Artists Are Aware Of Their Destiny And See Themselves As Actors In A Fateful Drama. With Me, Nothing Is Momentous: Obscure Youth, Glorious Old Age, Fateful Coincidences - Nothing Really Matters. I Have Written A Number Of Good Sentences. I Have Kept Free Of Delusions. I Know I Am Going To Die Soon.

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

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

We Lie Loudest When We Lie To Ourselves.

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

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

Failure In The Management Of Practical Affairs Seems To Be A Qualification For Success In The Management Of Public Affairs.

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 And Talents.

It Is Remarkable By How Much A Pinch Of Malice Enhances The Penetrating Power Of An Idea Or An Opinion. Our Ears, It Seems, Are Wonderfully Attuned To Sneers And Evil Reports About Our Fellow Men.

The Fanatical Communist Refuses To Believe Any Unfavorable Report Or Evidence About Russia, Nor Will He Be Disillusioned By Seeing With His Own Eyes The Cruel Misery Inside The Soviet Promised Land. It Is The True Believer's Ability To "shut His Eyes And Stop His Ears" To Facts That Do Not Deserve To Be Either Seen Or Heard Which Is The Source Of His Unequaled Fortitude And Constancy. He Cannot Be Frightened By Danger, Nor Disheartened By Obstacles, Nor Baffled By Contradictions Because He Denies Their Existence.

We Are Made Kind By Being Kind.

Man's Chief Goal In Life Is Still To Become And Stay Human, And Defend His Achievements Against The Encroachment Of Nature.

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 Nothing More Sublime Than Discontent Transmuted Into A Work Of Art, A Scientific Discovery, And So On.

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

It Is A Sign Of Creeping Inner Death When We Can No Longer Praise The Living.

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.

True Loyalty Between Individuals Is Possible Only In A Loose And Relatively Free 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.

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.

We Can Never Really Be Prepared For That Which Is Wholly New. 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 Needs Subordinate Self-confidence To Face Drastic Change Without Inner Trembling.

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

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.

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

The Americans Are Poor Haters In International Affairs Because Of Their Innate Feeling Of Superiority Over All Foreigners. An American's Hatred For A Fellow American Is Far More Virulent Than Any Antipathy He Can Work Up Against Foreigners. Should Americans Begin To Hate Foreigners Wholeheartedly, It Will Be An Indication That They Have Lost Confidence In Their Own Way Of Life.

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

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

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.

Dissipation Is A Form Of Self-sacrifice.

Children, Savages And True Believers Remember Far Less What They Have Seen Than What They Have Heard.

A Society That Refuses To Strive For Superfluities Is Likely To End Up Lacking In Necessities.

The Burning Conviction That We Have A Holy Duty Toward Others Is Often A Way Of Attaching Our Drowning Selves To A Passing Raft.

Those In Possession Of Absolute Power Can Not Only Prophesy And Make Their Prophecies Come True, But They Can Also Lie And Make Their Lies Come True.

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."

The Ruthlessness Born Of Self-seeking Is Ineffectual Compared With The Ruthlessness Sustained By Dedication To A Holy Cause. God Wishes, Said Calvin, That One Should Put Aside All Humanity When It Is A Question Of Striving For His Glory.

It Is Doubtful Whether The Oppressed Ever Fight For Freedom. They Fight For Pride And Power-power To Oppress Others.

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.

It Is Startling To See How The Oppressed Almost Invariably Shape Themselves In The Image Of Their Hated Oppressors.

Up To Now, America Has Not Been A Good Milieu For The Rise Of A Mass Movement. What Starts Out Here As A Mass Movement Ends Up As A Racket, A Cult, Or A Corporation.

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.

When The Weak Want To Give An Impression Of Strength They Hint Menacingly At Their Capacity For Evil. It Is By Its Promise Of A Sense Of Power That Evil Often Attracts The Weak.

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

We Can Remember Minutely And Precisely Only The Things Which Never Really Happened To Us.

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.

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.

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.

A Man By Himself Is In Bad Company.

All Mass Movements Generate In Their Adherents A Readiness To Die And A Proclivity For United Action; All Of Them, Irrespective Of The Doctrine They Preach And The Program They Project, Breed Fanaticism, Enthusiasm, Fervent Hope, Hatred And Intolerance; All Of Them Are Capable Of Releasing A Powerful Flow Of Activity In Certain Departments Of Life; All Of Them Demand Blind Faith And Singlehearted Allegiance.

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

Changing The World

To Be Aware How Fruitful The Playful Mood Can Be Is To Be Immune To The Propaganda Of The Alienated, Which Extols Resentment As A Fuel Of Achievement.

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.

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 Weak Are Not A Noble Breed. Their Sublime Deeds Of Faith, Daring, And Self-sacrifice Usually Spring From Questionable Motives. The Weak Hate Not Wickedness But Weakness; And One Instance Of Their Hatred Of Weakness Is Hatred Of Self. All The Passionate Pursuits Of The Weak Are In Some Degree A Striving To Escape, Blur, Or Disguise An Unwanted Self. It Is A Striving Shot Through With Malice, Envy, Self-deception, And A Host Of Petty Impulses; Yet It Often Culminates In Superb Achievements.

The Basic Test Of Freedom Is Perhaps Less In What We Are Free To Do Than In What We Are Free Not To Do.

Nature Attains Perfection, But Man Never Does. There Is A Perfect Ant, A Perfect Bee, But Man Is Perpetually Unfinished. He Is Both An Unfinished Animal And An Unfinished Man. It Is This Incurable Unfinishedness Which Sets Man Apart From Other Living Things. For, In The Attempt To Finish Himself, Man Becomes A Creator. Moreover, The Incurable Unfinishedness Keeps Man Perpetually Immature, Perpetually Capable Of Learning And Growing.

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

Absolute Faith Corrupts As Absolutely As Absolute Power.

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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

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