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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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The Fanatical Communist Refuses

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

Compassion Is The Antitoxin Of The Soul.

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.

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

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

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

Lack Of Sensitivity Is Perhaps Basically An Unawareness Of Ourselves.

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

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

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.

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

The Central Task Of Education Is To Implant A Will And Facility For Learning; It Should Produce Not Learned But Learning People. The Truly Human Society Is A Learning Society, Where Grandparents, Parents, And Children Are Students Together.

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

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

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

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.

To Believe That If Only We Had This Or That We Would Be Happy, Or To Pursue Any Excessive Desire, Diverts Us From Seeing That Happiness Depends On An Adequate Self.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

No One Has A Right To Happiness.

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

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

Nature Attains Perfection, But Man Never Does.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Creativity Is Discontent Translated Into Arts.

A Plant Needs Roots In Order To Grow. With Man It Is The Other Way Around: Only When He Grows Does He Have Roots And Feels At Home In The World.

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

What Monstrosities Would Walk The Streets Were Some People's Faces As Unfinished As Their Minds.

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.

There Are No Chaste Minds. Minds Copulate Wherever They Meet.

When People Are Bored It Is Primarily With Themselves.

Every Extreme Attitude Is A Fight From The Self.

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

We Lie Loudest When We Lie To Ourselves.

To Change Everything, Simply Change Your Attitude.

Change Your Attitude

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.

There Is No Telling To What Extremes Of Cruelty And Ruthlessness A Man Will Go When He Is Freed From The Fears, Hesitations, Doubts And The Vague Stirrings Of Decency That Go With Individual Judgment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

No Matter What Our Achievements Might Be, We Think Well Of Ourselves Only In Rare Moments. We Need People To Bear Witness Against Our Inner Judge, Who Keeps Book On Our Shortcomings And Transgressions. We Need People To Convince Us That We Are Not As Bad As We Think We Are.

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

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

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

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

Both The Revolutionary And The Creative Individual Are Perpetual Juveniles. The Revolutionary Does Not Grow Up Because He Cannot Grow, While The Creative Individual Cannot Grow Up Because He Keeps Growing.

When Cowardice Is Made Respectable, Its Followers Are Without Number Both From Among The Weak And The Strong; It Easily Becomes A Fashion.

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

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

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

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

This Food-and-shelter Theory Concerning Man's Efforts Is Without Insight. Our Most Persistent And Spectacular Efforts Are Concerned Not With The Preservation Of What We Are But With The Building Up Of An Imaginary Conception Of Ourselves In The Opinion Of Others. The Desire For Praise Is More Imperative Than The Desire For Food And Shelter.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Mass Movements Can Rise And Spread Without Belief In A God, But Never Without Belief In A Devil.

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

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.

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

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

An Easygoing Person Is Probably More Accessible To The Realization Of Eternity--the Endless Flow Of Life And Death--than One Who Takes His Prospects And Duties Overseriously. It Is The Overserious Who Are Truly Frivolous.

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

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.

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.

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

Exaggeration Is

A Rising Mass Movement Attracts And Holds A Following Not By Its Doctrine And Promises But By The Refuge It Offers From The Anxieties, Barrenness And Meaningless Of An Individual Existence. It Cures The Poignantly Frustrated Not By Conferring Upon Them An Absolute Truth Or By Remedying The Difficulties And Abuses Which Made Their Lives Miserable, But By Freeing Them From Their Ineffectual Selves And It Does This By Enfolding And Absorbing Them Into A Closely Knit And Exultant Corporate Whole.

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

The Greeks Invented Logic But Were Not Fooled By It.

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.

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

There Is No Reason Why Humanity Cannot Be Served Equally By Weighty And Trivial Motives.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Capacity For Getting Along With Our Neighbor Depends To A Large Extent On The Capacity For Getting Along With Ourselves. The Self-respecting Individual Will Try To Be As Tolerant Of His Neighbor's Shortcomings As He Is Of His Own.

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 Sense Of Inferiority Inherent In The Act Of Imitation Breeds Resentment. The Impulse Of The Imitators Is To Overcome The Model They Imitate.

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

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

Nationalist Pride, Like Other Variants Of Pride, Can Be A Substitute For Self-respect.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Though They Seem At Opposite Poles, Fanatics Of All Kinds Are Actually Crowded Together At One End. It Is The Fanatic And The Moderate Who Are Poles Apart And Never Meet.

Our Greatest Pretenses Are Built Up Not To Hide The Evil And The Ugly In Us, But Our Emptiness. The Hardest Thing To Hide Is Something That Is Not There.

To Think Out A Problem Is Not Unlike Drawing A Caricature. You Have To Exaggerate The Salient Point And Leave Out That Which Is Not Typical. "to Illustrate A Principle ," Says Bagehot , "you Must Exaggerate Much And You Must Omit Much." As To The Quantity Of Absolute Truth In A Thought : It Seems To Me The More Comprehensive And Unobjectionable A Thought Becomes, The More Clumsy And Unexciting It Gets. I Like Half-truths Of A Certain Kind They Are Interesting And They Stimulate.

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

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

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

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

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.

You Can Never Get Enough Of What You Don't Need To Make You Happy.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

We Usually See Only The Things We Are Looking For- So Much So That We Sometimes See Them Where They Are Not.

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

The 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.

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.

A Man By Himself Is In Bad Company.

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

Every Era Has A Currency That Buys Souls. In Some The Currency Is Pride, In Others It Is Hope, In Still Others It Is A Holy Cause. There Are Of Course Times When Hard Cash Will Buy Souls, And The Remarkable Thing Is That Such Times Are Marked By Civility, Tolerance, And The Smooth Working Of Everyday Life.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Always Held My Flower In A Clenched Fist.

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

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

An Empty Head Is Not Really Empty; It Is Stuffed With Rubbish. Hence The Difficulty Of Forcing Anything Into An Empty Head.

The Less Satisfaction We Derive From Being Ourselves, The Greater Is Our Desire To Be Like Others.

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.

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

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

If A Society Is To Preserve Stability And A Degree Of Continuity, It Must Learn How To Keep Its Adolescents From Imposing Their Tastes, Values, And Fantasies On Everyday Life.

Children Are The Keys Of Paradise.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Crude Absurdities, Trivial Nonsense, And Sublime Truths Are Equally Potent In Readying People For Self-sacrifice If They Are Accepted As The Sole, Eternal Truth

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Our Achievements Speak For Themselves. What We Have To Keep Track Of Are Our Failures, Discouragements And Doubts. We Tend To Forget The Past Difficulties, The Many False Starts, And The Painful Groping. We See Our Past Achievements As The End Results Of A Clean Forward Thrust, And Our Present Difficulties As Signs Of Decline And Decay.

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.

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

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

To The Old, The New Is Usually Bad News.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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Donella Meadows

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