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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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It Is The Acquisition

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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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.

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.

People Unfit For Freedom - Who Cannot Do Much With It - Are Hungry For Power. The Desire For Freedom Is An Attribute Of A "have" Type Of Self. It Says: Leave Me Alone And I Shall Grow, Learn, And Realize My Capacities. The Desire For Power Is Basically An Attribute Of A "have Not" Type Of Self.

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

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

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

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.

The World Leans On Us. When We Sag, The Whole World Seems To Droop.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

Far More Crucial Than What We Know Or Do Not Know Is What We Do Not Want To Know.

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

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

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

We Run Fastest And Farthest When We Run From Ourselves.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Poverty When Coupled With Creativeness Is Usually Free Of Frustration. This Is True Of The Poor Artisan Skilled In His Trade And Of The Poor Writer, Artist, And Scientist In The Full Possession Of Creative Powers. 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. The Decline Of Handicrafts In Modern Times Is Perhaps One Of The Causes For The Rise Of Frustration And The Increased Susceptibility Of The Individual To Mass Movements.

Self Confidence

Every Intense Desire Is Perhaps Basically A Desire To Be Different From What We Are.

All Prayers And Hopes Are A Reaching-out For Coincidences.

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

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?

The Chief Burden Of The Frustrated Is The Consciousness Of A Blemished, Ineffectual Self, And Their Chief Desire Is To Slough Off The Unwanted Self And Begin A New Life. They Try To Realize This Desire Either By Finding A New Identity Or By Blurring And Camouflaging Their Individual Distinctness; And Both These Ends Are Reached By Imitation.

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

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.

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

The End Comes When We No Longer Talk With Ourselves. It Is The End Of Genuine Thinking And The Beginning Of The Final Loneliness. The Remarkable Thing Is That The Cessation Of The Inner Dialogue Marks Also The End Of Our Concern With The World Around Us. It Is As If We Noted The World And Think About It Only When We Have To Report It To Ourselves.

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.

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

Should Israel Perish, The Holocaust Will Be Upon Us.

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.

The Greatest Weariness Comes From Work Not Done.

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

One Of The Chief Differences Between An Adult And A Juvenile Is That The Adult Knows When He Is An Ass While The Juvenile Never Does.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Insatiable Hunger

Humility Is Not Renunciation Of Pride But The Substitution Of One Pride For Another.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

People Who Bite The Hand That Feeds Them Usually Lick The Boot That Kicks Them.

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

Children Are The Keys Of Paradise.

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.

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.

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

Language Was Invented To Ask Questions.

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

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

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

We Lie Loudest When We Lie To Ourselves.

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.

The Truth Seems To Be That Propaganda On Its Own Cannot Force Its Way Into Unwilling Minds; Neither Can It Inculcate Something Wholly New; Nor Can It Keep People Persuaded Once They Have Ceased To Believe. It Penetrates Into Minds Already Open, And Rather Than Instill Opinion It Articulates And Justifies Opinions Already Present In The Minds Of Its Recipients.

Self-righteousness Is A Manifestation Of Self-contempt.

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

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

The Future Belongs To The Learners-not The Knowers.

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.

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

Love-making Is Radical, While Marriage Is Conservative.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

No One Is Truly Literate Who Cannot Read His Own Heart.

Lack Of Sensitivity Is Perhaps Basically An Unawareness Of Ourselves.

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.

Religion Is Not A Matter Of God, Church, Holy Cause, Etc. These Are But Accessories. The Source Of Religious Preoccupation Is In The Self, Or Rather The Rejection Of The Self. Dedication In The Obverse Side Of Self-rejection. Man Alone Is A Religious Animal Because, As Montaigne Points Out, It Is A Malady Confined To Man, And Not Seen In Any Other Creature, To Hate And Despise Ourselves.

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

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.

Our Quarrel With The World Is An Echo Of The Endless Quarrel Proceeding Within Us.

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.

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.

Rudeness Is The Weak Man's Limitation Of Strength.

Far More Crucial Than What We Know Or Do Not Know Is What We Do Not Want To Know. One Often Obtains A Clue To A Person's Nature By Discovering The Reasons For His Or Her Imperviousness To Certain Impressions.

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.

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.

A Man By Himself Is In Bad Company.

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.

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.

Those Who Feel Guilty Are Afraid; And Those Who Are Afraid Somehow Feel Guilty. To The Onlooker, Too, The Fearful Seem Guilty.

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.

The Revulsion From An Unwanted Self, And The Impulse To Forget It, Mask It, Slough It Off And Lose It, Produce Both A Readiness To Sacrifice The Self And A Willingness To Dissolve It By Losing One's Individual Distinctness In A Compact Collective Whole.

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

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.

For Many People, An Excuse Is Better Than An Achievement Because An Achievement, No Matter How Great, Leaves You Having To Prove Yourself Again In The Future; But An Excuse Can Last For Life.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Self-despisers Are Less Intent On Their Own Increase Than On The Diminution Of Others. Where Self-esteem Is Unobtainable, Envy Takes The Place Of Greed.

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.

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

Changing The World

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.

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.

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

We Are Told That Talent Creates Its Own Opportunities. But It Sometimes Seems That Intense Desire Creates Not Only Its Own Opportunities, But Its Own Talents.

No One Has A Right To Happiness.

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

Take Away Hatred From Some People, And You Have Men Without Faith.

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

Nature Has No Compassion. Nature Accepts No Excuses And The Only Punishment It Knows Is Death.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

Fair Play Is Primarily Not Blaming Others For Anything That Is Wrong With Us.

The Impulse To Think, To Philosophize And Spin Beauty And Brilliance Out Of Mind And Soul, Is Somehow The Offspring Of Resistance Of An Effort To Overcome An Apparently Insurmountable Obstacle. Hence Cultural Creativeness Is More Likely To Flourish In An Atmosphere Of Restriction, Of An Imposed Pattern Of Thought And Behavior, Than In One Of Total Freedom.

Animals Often Strike Us As Passionate Machines.

A Just Society Must Strive With All Its Might To Right Wrongs Even If Righting Wrongs Is A Highly Perilous Undertaking. But If It Is To Survive, A Just Society Must Be Strong And Resolute Enough To Deal Swiftly And Relentlessly With Those Who Would Mistake Its Good Will For Weakness.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

When Our Individual Interests And Prospects Do Not Seem Worth Living For, We Are In Desperate Need For Something Apart From Us To Live For. All Forms Of Dedication, Devotion, Loyalty And Self-surrender Are In Essence A Desperate Clinging To Something Which Might Give Worth And Meaning To Our Futile, Spoiled Lives.

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

The Feeling Of Being Hurried Is Not Usually The Result Of Living A Full Life And Having No Time. It Is On The Contrary Born Of A Vague Fear That We Are Wasting Our Life. 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.

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

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

Misrepresentation

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

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

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.

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

Quite Often The Social Doctors Become Part Of The Disease.

To Our Real, Naked Selves There Is Not A Thing On Earth Or In Heaven Worth Dying For. It Is Only When We See Ourselves As Actors In A Staged (and Therefore Unreal) Performance That Death Loses Its Frightfulness And Finality And Becomes An Act Of Make-believe And A Theatrical Gesture. It Is One Of The Main Tasks Of A Real Leader To Mask The Grim Reality Of Dying And Killing By Evoking In His Followers The Illusion That They Are Participating In A Grandiose Spectacle, A Solemn Or Lighthearted Dramatic Performance.

Freedom Released The Energies Of The Masses Not By Exhilarating But By Unbalancing, Irritating, And Goading.

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.

One Word Characterizes The Most Strenuous Of The Efforts For The Advancement Of Science That I Have Made Perservereingly During Fifty-five Years; That Word Is Failure

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

Only The Individual Who Has Come To Terms With His Self Can Have A Dispassionate Attitude Toward The World.

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.

Anger Is A Prelude To Courage.

People Haunted By The Purposelessness Of Their Lives Try To Find A New Content Not Only By Dedicating Themselves To A Holy Cause But Also By Nursing A Fanatical Grievance. A Mass Movement Offers Them Unlimited Opportunities For Both.

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

We Do Not Usually Look For Allies When We Love. Indeed, We Often Look On Those Who Love With Us As Rivals And Trespassers. But We Always Look For Allies When We Hate.

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.

Nothing Comes Easily. My Work Smells Of Sweat.

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.

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

To Believe That If We Could Have But This Or That We Would Be Happy Is To Suppress The Realization That The Cause Of Our Unhappiness Is In Our Inadequate And Blemished Selves. Excessive Desire Is Thus A Means Of Suppressing Our Sense Of Worthlessness.

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.

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.

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.

The Well-adjusted Make Poor Prophets.

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.

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

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

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.

There Can Be No Freedom Without Freedom To Fail.

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

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