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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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It Is The Fate

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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We Run Fastest And Farthest When We Run From Ourselves.

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.

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

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 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.

The Conservatism Of A Religion - It's Orthodoxy - Is The Inert Coagulum Of A Once Highly Reactive Sap.

Sometimes We Feel The Loss Of A Prejudice As A Loss Of Vigor.

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

It Still Holds True That Man Is Most Uniquely Human When He Turns Obstacles Into Opportunities.

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.

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.

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.

When People Are Bored It Is Primarily With Themselves.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

A Man's Worth Is What He Is Divided By What He Thinks He Is.

[the Designated Or Chosen Leader Tries To] Articulate And Justify The Resentment Dammed Up In The Souls Of The Frustrated. He Kindles The Vision Of A Breathtaking Future So As To Justify The Sacrifice Of A Transitory Present. He Stages The World Of Make-believe So Indispensable For The Realization Of Self-sacrifice And United Action.

It Is A Paradox That In Our Time Of Drastic Rapid Change, When The Future Is In Our Midst Devouring The Present Before Our Eyes, We Have Never Been Less Certain About What Is Ahead Of Us.

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

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

Those Of Little Faith Are Of Little Hatred.

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

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

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.

The Beginning Of Thought Is In Disagreement - Not Only With Others But Also With Ourselves.

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.

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

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

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

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

Absolute Faith Corrupts As Absolutely As Absolute Power.

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.

The Vigor Of A Mass Movement Stems From The Propensity Of Its Followers For United Action And Self-sacrifice. When We Ascribe The Success Of A Movement To Its Faith, Doctrine, Propaganda, Leadership, Ruthlessness And So On, We Are But Referring To Instruments Of Unification And To Means Used To Inculcate A Readiness For Self-sacrifice. It Is Perhaps Impossible To Understand The Nature Of A Mass Movement Unless It Is Recognized That Their Chief Preoccupation Is To Foster, Perfect And Perpetuate A Facility For United Action And Self-sacrifice.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Nature Attains Perfection, But Man Never Does.

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

To Be 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.

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

Where Unity And Self-sacrifice Are Indispensable For The Normal Functioning Of Society, Everyday Life Is Likely To Be Either Religiofied (common Tasks Turned Into Holy Causes) Or Militarized.

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

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.

The Compulsion To Take Ourselves Seriously Is In Inverse Proportion To Our Creative Capacity. When The Creative Flow Dries Up, All We Have Left Is Our Importance.

No Matter How Noble The Objectives Of A Government, If It Blurs Decency And Kindness, Cheapens Human Life, And Breeds Ill Will And Suspicion; It Is An Evil Government.

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.

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

In Every Passionate Pursuit, The Pursuit Counts More Than The Object Pursued.

The Less Justified A Man Is In Claiming Excellence For His Own Self, The More Ready Is He To Claim All Excellence For His Nation, His Religion, His Race Or His Holy Cause.

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

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.

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

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.

Communists Are Frustrated Capitalists.

Successful Action Tends To Become An End In Itself.

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.

The Greatest Weariness Comes From Work Not Done.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

All Mass Movements Strive, Therefore, To Interpose A Fact-proof Screen Between The Faithful And The Realities Of The World. They Do This By Claiming That The Ultimate And Absolute Truth Is Already Embodied In Their Doctrine And That There Is No Truth Nor Certitude Outside It. The Facts On Which The True Believer Bases His Conclusions Must Not Be Derived From His Experience Or Observation But From Holy Writ.

The Future Belongs To The Learners-not The Knowers.

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

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

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

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

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.

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

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?

What Greater Reassurance Can The Weak Have Than That They Are Like Anyone Else?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We Lie Loudest When We Lie To Ourselves.

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

Youth Itself Is A Talent, A Perishable Talent.

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.

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.

The Unpredictability Inherent In Human Affairs Is Due Largely To The Fact That The By-products Of A Human Process Are More Fateful Than The Product.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

A Grievance Is Most Poignant When Almost Redressed.

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

Changing The World

There Is A Close Connection Between Lack Of Confidence And The Passionate State Of Mind.

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

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

Quite Often The Social Doctors Become Part Of The Disease.

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

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

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

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

...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.

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

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

It Is 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

It Is When Power Is Wedded To Chronic Fear That It Becomes Formidable.

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

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

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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.

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

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

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.

Dissipation Is A Form Of Self-sacrifice.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Facts Are Counterrevolutionary.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Even In Slight Things The Experience Of The New Is Rarely Without Some Stirring Of Foreboding.

Radicalism Itself Ceases To Be Radical When Absorbed Mainly In Preserving Its Control Over A Society Or An Economy.

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

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

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

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

Lack Of Sensitivity Is Perhaps Basically An Unawareness Of Ourselves.

Language Was Invented To Ask Questions.

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

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.

Animals Often Strike Us As Passionate Machines.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The 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.

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

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.

Anger Is A Prelude To Courage.

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.

To Most Of Us Nothing Is So Invisible As An Unpleasant Truth. Though It Is Held Before Our Eyes, Pushed Under Our Noses, Rammed Down Our Throats- We Know It Not.

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

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

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

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.

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

Should Israel Perish, The Holocaust Will Be Upon Us.

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

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Jurgen Klinsmann

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