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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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The Monstrous Evils Of

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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Love-making Is Radical, While Marriage Is Conservative.

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

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

It Has Often Been Said That Power Corrupts. But It Is Perhaps Equally Important To Realize That Weakness, Too, Corrupts. Power Corrupts The Few, While Weakness Corrupts The Many. Hatred, Malice, Rudeness, Intolerance, And Suspicion Are The Faults Of Weakness. The Resentment Of The Weak Does Not Spring From Any Injustice Done To Them But From Their Sense Of Inadequacy And Impotence. We Cannot Win The Weak By Sharing Our Wealth With Them. They Feel Our Generosity As Oppression.

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

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.

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.

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

There Are Similarities Between Absolute Power And Absolute Faith: A Demand For Absolute Obedience, A Readiness To Attempt The Impossible, A Bias For Simple Solutionsto Cut The Knot Rather Than Unravel It, The Viewing Of Compromise As Surrender. Both Absolute Power And Absolute Faith Are Instruments Of Dehumanization. Hence, Absolute Faith Corrupts As Absolutely As Absolute Power.

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

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.

Men Of Thought Seldom Work Well Together, Whereas Between Men Of Action There Is Usually An Easy Camaraderie.

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.

The Wisdom Of Others Remains Dull Till It Is Writ Over With Our Own Blood. We Are Essentially Apart From The World; It Bursts Into Our Consciousness Only When It Sinks Its Teeth And Nails Into Us.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

It Is Thus With Most Of Us; We Are What Other People Say We Are. We Know Ourselves Chiefly By Hearsay.

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.

Language Was Invented To Ask Questions.

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

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.

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

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.

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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

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.

Should Americans Begin To Hate Foreigners Wholeheartedly, It Will Be An Indication That They Have Lost Confidence In Their Own Way Of Life.

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

Unpredictability, Too, Can Become Monotonous.

Unpredictability

The Well-adjusted Make Poor Prophets.

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

In A Modern Society People Can Live Without Hope Only When Kept Dazed And Out Of Breath By Incessant Hustling.

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

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

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

A Mass Movement Attracts And Holds A Following Not Because It Can Satisfy The Desire For Self-advancement, But Because It Can Satisfy The Passion For Self-renunciation.

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.

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

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.

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

All Leaders Strive To Turn Their Followers Into Children.

A Multitude Of Words Is Probably The Most Formidable Means Of Blurring And Obscuring Thought. There Is No Thought, However Momentous, That Cannot Be Expressed Lucidly In 200 Words.

Nowhere At Present Is There Such A Measureless Loathing Of Their Country By Educated People As In America.

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

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.

Absolute Faith Corrupts As Absolutely As Absolute Power.

How Frighteningly Few Are The Persons Whose Death Would Spoil Our Appetite And Make The World Seem Empty.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

For Men To Plunge Headlong Into An Undertaking Of Vast Change, They Must Be Intensely Discontented Yet Not Destitute, And They Must Have The Feeling That By The Possession Of Some Potent Doctrine, Infallible Leader Or Some New Technique They Have Access To A Source Of Irresistible Power.

The History Of This Country Was Made Largely By People Who Wanted To Be Left Alone. Those Who Could Not Thrive When Left To Themselves Never Felt At Ease In America.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Act Of Self-denial Seems To Confer On Us The Right To Be Harsh And Merciless Toward Others. 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 Breed Pride And Arrogance. The True Believer Is Apt To See Himself As One Of The Chosen, The Salt Of The Earth, A Prince Disguised In Meekness, Who Is Destined To Inherit This Earth And The Kingdom Of Heaven, Too. He Who Is Not Of His Faith Is Evil; He Who Will Not Listen Shall Perish.

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

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

...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.

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.

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.

The Leader Has To Be Practical And A Realist, Yet Must Talk The Language Of The Visionary And The Idealist.

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

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.

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

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

Self-righteousness Is A Manifestation Of Self-contempt.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

The 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 Urge To Escape Our Real Self Is Also An Urge To Escape The Rational And The Obvious.

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

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.

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.

Passionate Intensity May Serve As A Substitute For Confidence.

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

The Future Belongs To The Learners-not The Knowers.

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

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

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

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.

Action Can Give Us The Feeling Of Being Useful, But Only Words Can Give Us A Sense Of Weight And Purpose.

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

When People Are Free To Do As They Please, They Usually Imitate Each Other. Originality Is Deliberate And Forced, And Partakes Of The Nature Of A Protest. A Society Which Gives Unlimited Freedom To The Individual, More Often Than Not Attains A Disconcerting Sameness.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 Well Adjusted Make Poor Prophets. A Pleasant Existence Blinds Us To The Possibilities Of Drastic Change. We Cling To What We Call Our Common Sense, Our Practical Point Of View. Actually, These Are Names For An All-absorbing Familiarity With Things As They Are. . . . Thus It Happens That When The Times Become Unhinged, It Is The Practical People Who Are Caught Unaware . . . Still Clinging To Things That No Longer Exist.

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.

To Some, Freedom Means The Opportunity To Do What They Want To Do; To Most It Means Not To Do What They Do Not Want To Do. It Is Perhaps True That Those Who Can Grow Will Feel Free Under Any Condition.

Self-contempt, However Vague, Sharpens Our Eyes For The Imperfections Of Others. We Usually Strive To Reveal In Others The Blemishes We Hide In Ourselves.

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

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.

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

Some People Have No Original Ideas Because They Do Not Think Well Enough Of Themselves To Consider Their Ideas Worth Noticing And Developing.

The Uncompromising Attitude Is More Indicative Of An Inner Uncertainty Than A Deep Conviction. The Implacable Stand Is Directed More Against The Doubt Within Than The Assailant Without.

To Grow Old Is To Grow Common. Old Age Equalizes -- We Are Aware That What Is Happening To Us Has Happened To Untold Numbers From The Beginning Of Time. When We Are Young We Act As If We Were The First Young People In The World.

Our Doubts About Ourselves Cannot Be Banished Except By Working At That Which Is The One And Only Thing We Know We Ought To Do. Other People's Assertions Cannot Silence The Howling Dirge Within Us. It Is Our Talents Rusting Unused Within Us That Secrete The Poison Of Self-doubt Into Our Bloodstream.

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

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

The Remarkable Thing Is That It Is The Crowded Life That Is Most Easily Remembered. A Life Full Of Turns, Achievements, Disappointments, Surprises, And Crises Is A Life Full Of Landmarks. The Empty Life Has Even Its Few Details Blurred, And Cannot Be Remembered With Certainty.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

We Probably Have A Greater Love For Those We Support Than For Those Who Support Us. Our Vanity Carries More Weight Than Our Self-interest.

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.

To Make Of Human Affairs A Coherent, Precise, Predictable Whole One Must Ignore Or Suppress Man As He Really Is. It Is By Eliminating Man From Their Equation That The Makers Of History Can Predict The Future, And The Writers Of History Can Give A Pattern To The Past.

It Almost Seems That Nobody Can Hate America As Much As Native Americans. America Needs New Immigrants To Love And Cherish It.

Native American

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

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.

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.

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.

Glory Is Largely A Theatrical Concept. There Is No Striving For Glory Without A Vivid Awareness Of An Audience.

Communists Are Frustrated Capitalists.

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

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.

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.

Anger Is A Prelude To Courage.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

There Is Probably An Element Of Malice In Our Readiness To Overestimate People - We Are, As It Were, Laying Up For Ourselves The Pleasure Of Later Cutting Them Down To Size.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

When People Are Bored It Is Primarily With Themselves.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Misrepresentation

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."

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.

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

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.

A Grievance Is Most Poignant When Almost Redressed.

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

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 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."

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The 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.

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.

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

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Walter F. Mondale

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