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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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Give People Pride And

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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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.

Should Israel Perish, The Holocaust Will Be Upon Us.

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.

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. They Know That Basic Human Problems Can Have No Final Solutions, That Our Freedom, Justice, Equality, Etc. Are Far From Absolute, And That The Good Life Is Compounded Of Half Measures, Compromises, Lesser Evils, And Gropings Toward The Perfect. The Rejection Of Approximations And The Insistence On Absolutes Are The Manifestation Of A Nihilism That Loathes Freedom, Tolerance, And Equity.

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

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

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.

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.

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

When People Are Bored It Is Primarily With Themselves.

A Sublime Religion Inevitably Generates A Strong Feeling Of Guilt. There Is An Unavoidable Contrast Between Loftiness Of Profession And Imperfection Of Practice. And, As One Would Expect, The Feeling Of Guilt Promotes Hate And Brazenness. Thus It Seems That The More Sublime The Faith The More Virulent The Hatred It Breeds.

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

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.

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

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

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 Are Made Kind By Being Kind.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

It Is Futile To Judge A Kind Deed By Its Motives. Kindness Can Become Its Own Motive. We Are Made Kind By Being Kind.

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

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

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.

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

Our Present Addiction To Pollsters And Forecasters Is A Symptom Of Our Chronic Uncertainty About The Future... We Watch Our Experts Read The Entrails Of Statistical Tables And Graphs The Way The Ancients Watched Their Soothsayers Read The Entrails Of A Chicken.

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.

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

The Real Persuaders Are Our Appetites, Our Fears And Above All Our Vanity. The Skillful Propagandist Stirs And Coaches These Internal Persuaders.

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

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.

The Remarkable Thing Is That We Really Love Our Neighbor As Ourselves: We Do Unto Others As We Do Unto Ourselves. We Hate Others When We Hate Ourselves. We Are Tolerant Toward Others When We Tolerate Ourselves. We Forgive Others When We Forgive Ourselves. We Are Prone To Sacrifice Others When We Are Ready To Sacrifice Ourselves.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Passionate Hatred Can Give Meaning And Purpose To An Empty Life.

The Passion To Get Ahead Is Sometimes Born Of The Fear Lest We Be Left Behind.

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

Compassion Is The Antitoxin Of The Soul: Where There Is Compassion Even The Most Poisonous Impulses Remain Relatively Harmless.

A Man By Himself Is In Bad Company.

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 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.

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

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

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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

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.

Successful Action Tends To Become An End In Itself.

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 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.

To Learn You Need A Certain Degree Of Confidence, Not Too Much And Not Too Little. If You Have Too Little Confidence, You Will Think You Can't Learn. If You Have Too Much, You Will Think You Don't Have To Learn.

Jesus Was Not A Christian, Nor Was Marx A Marxist.

A Person's Creative Ability Decreases In Direct Proportion To The Degree To Which He Takes Himself Seriously.

When Grubbing For Necessities Man Is Still An Animal. He Becomes Uniquely Human When He Reaches Out For The Superfluous And Extravagant.

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

Compassion Is The Antitoxin Of The Soul.

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

Self-righteousness Is A Manifestation Of Self-contempt.

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

In The Alchemy Of Man's Soul Almost All Noble Attributes- Courage, Honor, Love, Hope, Faith, Duty, Loyalty, And So On - Can Be Transmuted Into Ruthlessness. Compassion Alone Stands Apart From The Continuous Traffic Between Good And Evil Proceeding Within Us. Compassion Is The Antitoxin Of The Soul: Where There Is Compassion, Even The Most Poisonous Impulses Remain Relatively Harmless.

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

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.

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

The Future Belongs To The Learners-not The Knowers.

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.

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.

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

Sensuality Reconciles Us With The Human Race. The Misanthropy Of The Old Is Due In Large Part To The Fading Of The Magic Glow Of Desire.

Friendship Never Explain -- Your Friends Do Not Need It, And Your Enemies Will Not Believe It Anyway. A Real Friend Never Gets In Your Way, Unless You Happen To Be On The Way Down. A Friend Is Someone You Can Do Nothing With And Enjoy It. However Much We Guard Ourselves Against It, We Tend To Shape Ourselves In The Image Others Have Of Us. 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 Find It Hard To Apply The Knowledge Of Ourselves To Our Judgment Of Others. The Fact That We Are Never Of One Kind, That We Never Love Without Reservations And Never Hate With All Our Being Cannot Prevent Us From Seeing Others As Wholly Black Or White.

We Feel Free When We Escape - Even If It Be But From The Frying Pan To The Fire.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Creativity Is Discontent Translated Into Arts.

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

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?

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.

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 Opposite Of The Religious Fanatic Is Not The Fanatical Atheist But The Gentle Cynic Who Cares Not Whether There Is A God Or Not.

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

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

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.

You Rarely Find A Nonconformist Who Goes It Alone.

There Is A Perfect Ant, A Perfect Bee, But Man Is Perpetually Unfinished...moreover, The Incurable Unfinishedness Keeps Man Perpetually Immature, Perpetually Capable Of Learning And Growing.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Learners Inherit The Earth; While The Learned Find Themselves Beautifully Equipped To Deal With A World That No Longer Exists.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We All Have Private Ails. The Troublemakers Are They Who Need Public Cures For Their Private Ails.

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.

All Leaders Strive To Turn Their Followers Into Children.

Youth Itself Is A Talent, A Perishable Talent.

It Is The Around-the-corner Brand Of Hope That Prompts People To Action, While The Distant Hope Acts As An Opiate.

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.

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

Death Has But One Terror, That It Has No Tomorrow.

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

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.

Every Extreme Attitude Is A Fight From The Self.

Animals Often Strike Us As Passionate Machines.

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

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.

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.

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

We Are Ready To Die For An Opinion But Not For A Fact: Indeed, It Is By Our Readiness To Die That We Try To Prove The Factualness Of Our Opinion.

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.

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

One Is Not Quite Certain That Creativeness In The Arts, Literature, And Science Functions Best In An Environment Of Absolute Freedom. Chances Are That A Relatively Mild Tyranny Stimulates Creativeness.

Quite Often The Social Doctors Become Part Of The Disease.

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.

Those Of Little Faith Are Of Little Hatred.

To The Excessively Fearful The Chief Characteristic Of Power Is Its Arbitrariness. Man Had To Gain Enormously In Confidence Before He Could Conceive An All-powerful God Who Obeys His Own Laws.

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

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

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 .

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.

It Is Compassion Rather Than The Principle Of Justice Which Can Guard Us Against Being Unjust To Our Fellow Men.

Totalitarianism Spells Simplification: An Enormous Reduction In The Variety Of Aims, Motives, Interests, Human Types, And, Above All, In The Categories And Units Of Power.

Perhaps Our Originality Manifests Itself Most Strikingly In What We Do With That Which We Did Not Originate. To Discover Something Wholly New Can Be A Matter Of Chance, Of Idle Tinkering, Or Even Of The Chronic Dissatisfaction Of The Untalented.

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

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.

We Know That Words Cannot Move Mountains, But They Can Move The Multitude; And Men Are More Ready To Fight And Die For A Word Than For Anything Else. Words Shape Thought, Stir Feeling, And Beget Action; They Kill And Revive, Corrupt And Cure. The "men-of-words"- Priests, Prophets, Intellectuals- Have Played A More Decisive Role In History Than Military Leaders, Statesmen, And Businessmen.

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

Lack Of Sensitivity Is Perhaps Basically An Unawareness Of Ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Vehemence Is The Expression Of A Blind Effort To Support And Uphold Something That Can Never Stand On Its Own. Whether It Is Our Own Meaningless Self We Are Upholding, Or Some Doctrine Devoid Of Evidence, We Can Do It Only In A Frenzy Of Faith.

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

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.

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.

The Only Way To Predict The Future Is To Have Power To Shape The Future.

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

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

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.

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

We Are Least Open To Precise Knowledge Concerning The Things We Are Most Vehement About.

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

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

It Needs Fanatical Faith To Rationalize Our Cowardice.

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.

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.

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

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

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

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

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

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.

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

There Is A Grandeur In The Uniformity Of The Mass. When A Fashion, A Dance, A Song, A Slogan Or A Joke Sweeps Like Wildfire From One End Of The Continent To The Other, And A Hundred Million People Roar With Laughter, Sway Their Bodies In Unison, Hum One Song Or Break Forth In Anger And Denunciation, There Is The Overpowering Feeling That In This Country We Have Come Nearer The Brotherhood Of Man Than Ever Before.

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 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.

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

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