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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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The Most Effective Way

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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

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

The Necessary Has Never Been Man's Top Priority. The Passionate Pursuit Of The Nonessential And The Extravagant Is One Of The Chief Traits Of Human Uniqueness. Unlike Other Forms Of Life, Man's Greatest Exertions Are Made In The Pursuit Not Of Necessities But Of Superfluities.

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

Originality Is Deliberate And Forced, And Partakes Of The Nature Of A Protest.

To The Frustrated, Freedom From Responsibility Is More Attractive Than Freedom From Restraint. They Are Eager To Barter Their Independence For Relief From The Burdens Of Willing, Deciding And Being Responsible For Inevitable Failure. They Willingly Abdicate The Directing Of Their Lives To Those Who Want To Plan, Command And Shoulder All Responsibility.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Unity And Self-sacrifice, Of Themselves, Even When Fostered By The Most Noble Means, Produce A Facility For Hating. Even When Men League Themselves Mightily Together To Promote Tolerance And Peace On Earth, They Are Likely To Be Violently Intolerant Toward Those Not Of A Like Mind.

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

Man Is The Only Creature That Strives To Surpass Himself, And Yearns For The Impossible.

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

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

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

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.

Wordiness Is A Sickness Of American Writing. Too Many Words Dilute And Blur Ideas.

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

Wise Living Consists Perhaps Less In Acquiring Good Habits Than In Acquiring As Few Habits As Possible.

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

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.

More Significant Than The Fact That Poets Write Abstrusely, Painters Paint Abstractly, And Composers Compose Unintelligible Music Is That People Should Admire What They Cannot Understand; Indeed, Admire That Which Has No Meaning Or Principle.

Every Extreme Attitude Is A Fight From The Self.

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

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.

When Watching Men Of Power In Action It Must Be Always Kept In Mind That, Whether They Know It Or Not, Their Main Purpose Is The Elimination Or Neutralization Of The Independent Individual- The Independent Voter, Consumer, Worker, Owner, Thinker- And That Every Device They Employ Aims At Turning Men Into A Manipulable Animated Instrument Which Is Aristotle's Definition Of A Slave.

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.

The Well-adjusted Make Poor Prophets.

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.

A Man Is Likely To Mind His Own Business When It Is Worth Minding.

Both Faith And Terror Are Instruments For The Elimination Of Individual Self-respect. Terror Crushes The Autonomy Of Self-respect, Where Faith Obtains Its More Or Less Voluntary Surrender. In Both Cases, The Result Of The Elimination Of Individual Autonomy Is - Automatism. Both Faith And Terror Reduce The Human Entity To A Formula That Can Be Manipulated At Will.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Collective Unity Is Not The Result Of The Brotherly Love Of The Faithful For Each Other. The Loyalty Of The True Believer Is To The Whole The Church, Party, Nation And Not To His Fellow True Believer. True Loyalty Between Individuals Is Possible Only In A Loose And Relatively Free Society .

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

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

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

The Leader Personifies The Certitude Of The Creed And The Defiance And Grandeur Of Power. He Articulates And Justifies The Resentment Damned Up In The Souls Of The Frustrated. He Kindles The Vision Of A Breath-taking Future So As To Justify The Sacrifice Of A Transitory Present. He Stages A World Of Make-believe So Indispensable For The Realization Of Self-sacrifice And United Action.

Take Man's Most Fantastic Invention- God. Man Invents God In The Image Of His Longings, In The Image Of What He Wants To Be, Then Proceeds To Imitate That Image, Vie With It, And Strive To Overcome It.

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

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.

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

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.

The Untalented Are More At Ease In A Society That Gives Them Valid Alibis For Not Achieving Than In One Where Opportunities Are Abundant. In An Affluent Society, The Alienated Who Clamor For Power Are Largely Untalented People Who Cannot Make Use Of The Unprecedented Opportunities For Self-realization, And Cannot Escape The Confrontation With An Ineffectual Self.

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.

Naivete In Grownups Is Often Charming; But When Coupled With Vanity It Is Indistinguishable From Stupidity.

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

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 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.

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

There Is Always A Chance That He Who Sets Himself Up As His Brother's Keeper Will End Up By Being His Jail-keeper.

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.

Dissipation Is A Form Of Self-sacrifice.

It Needs Fanatical Faith To Rationalize Our Cowardice.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

To Change Everything, Simply Change Your Attitude.

Change Your Attitude

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Insatiable Hunger

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

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.

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?

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

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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.

[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.

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

It Is Not Actual Suffering But The Taste Of Better Things Which Excites People To Revolt.

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

It Is Easier To Hate An Enemy With Much Good In Him Than One Who Is All Bad. We Cannot Hate Those We Despise.

Creativity Is Discontent Translated Into Arts.

Without A Sense Of Proportion There Can Be Neither Good Taste Nor Genuine Intelligence, Nor Perhaps Moral Integrity.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

Unless A Man Has The Talents To Make Something Of Himself, Freedom Is An Irksome Burden. We Join A Mass Movement To Escape From Individual Responsibility, Or, In The Words Of An Ardent Young Nazi, To Be Free From Freedom. It Was Not Sheer Hypocrisy When The Rank-and-file Nazis Declared Themselves Not Guilty Of All The Enormities They Had Committed. They Considered Themselves Cheated And Maligned When Made To Shoulder Responsibility For Obeying Orders. Had They Not Joined The Nazi Movement In Order To Be Free From Responsibility?

To Be Fully Alive Is To Feel That Everything Is Possible.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Quite Often In History Action Has Been The Echo Of Words. An Era Of Talk Was Followed By An Era Of Events. The New Barbarism Of The Twentieth Century Is The Echo Of Words Bandied About By Brilliant Speakers And Writers In The Second Half Of The Nineteenth.

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.

One Of The Surprising Privileges Of Intellectuals Is That They Are Free To Be Scandalously Asinine Without Harming Their Reputations.

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

Lack Of Sensitivity Is Perhaps Basically An Unawareness Of Ourselves.

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.

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

Misrepresentation

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

Poverty When Coupled With Creativeness Is Usually Free Of Frustration. This Is True Of The Poor Artisan Skilled In His Trade And Of The Poor Writer, Artist, And Scientist In The Full Possession Of Creative Powers. Nothing So Bolsters Our Self-confidence And Reconciles Us With Ourselves As The Continuous Ability To Create; To See Things Grow And Develop Under Our Hand, Day In, Day Out. The Decline Of Handicrafts In Modern Times Is Perhaps One Of The Causes For The Rise Of Frustration And The Increased Susceptibility Of The Individual To Mass Movements.

Self Confidence

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

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.

Nature Attains Perfection, But Man Never Does.

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.

A Man By Himself Is In Bad Company.

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

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

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.

The Pre-human Creature From Which Man Evolved Was Unlike Any Other Living Thing In Its Malicious Viciousness Toward Its Own Kind. Humanization Was Not A Leap Forward But A Groping Toward Survival.

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.

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

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

We Lie Loudest When We Lie To Ourselves.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

We Run Fastest And Farthest When We Run From Ourselves.

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.

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 Burning Conviction That We Have A Holy Duty Toward Others Is Often A Way Of Attaching Our Drowning Selves To A Passing Raft.

You Rarely Find A Nonconformist Who Goes It Alone.

For Though Ours Is A Godless Age, It Is The Very Opposite Of Irreligious. The True Believer Is Everywhere On The March, And Both By Converting And Antagonizing He Is Shaping The World In His Own Image. And Whether We Are To Line Up With Him Or Against Him, It Is Well That We Should Know All We Can Concerning His Nature And Potentialities.

It Is Part Of The Formidableness Of A Genuine Mass Movement That The Self-sacrifice It Promotes Includes Also A Sacrifice Of Some Of The Moral Sense, Which Cramps And Restrains Our Nature.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Passion For Equality Is Partly A Passion For Anonymity: To Be One Thread Of The Many Which Make Up A Tunic; One Thread Not Distinguishable From The Others. No One Can Then Point Us Out, Measure Us Against Others And Expose Our Inferiority.

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.

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

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

Language Was Invented To Ask Questions. Answers May Be Given By Grunts And Gestures, But Questions Must Be Spoken. Humanness Came Of Age When Man Asked The First Question. Social Stagnation Results Not From A Lack Of Answers But From The Absence Of The Impulse To Ask Questions.

No Matter What Our Achievements Might Be, We Think Well Of Ourselves Only In Rare Moments.

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.

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.

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

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

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

When We Are In Competition With Ourselves, And Match Our Todays Against Our Yesterdays, We Derive Encouragement From Past Misfortunes And Blemishes. Moreover, The Competition With Ourselves Leaves Unimpaired Our Benevolence Toward Our Fellow Men.

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

To Overestimate The Originality Of One's Thoughts Is Perhaps A Less Serious Defect Than Being Unaware Of Their Newness. There Is A More Pronounced Lack Of Sensitivity In Underestimating (ourselves And Others) Than In Overestimating.

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.

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

Absolute Power Turns Its Possessors Not Into A God But An Anti-god. For God Turned Clay Into Men, While The Absolute Despot Turns Men Into Clay.

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.

Animals Can Learn, But It Is Not By Learning That They Become Dogs, Cats, Or Horses. Only Man Has To Learn To Become What He Is Supposed To Be.

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

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.

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.

The Poor On The Borderline Of Starvation Live Purposeful Lives. To Be Engaged In A Desperate Struggle For Food And Shelter Is To Be Wholly Free From A Sense Of Futility

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

No One Has A Right To Happiness.

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

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

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

Our Sense Of Power Is More Vivid When We Break A Man's Spirit Than When We Win His Heart. For We Can Win A Man's Heart One Day And Lose It The Next. But When We Break A Proud Spirit We Achieve Something That Is Final And Absolute.

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.

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

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.

It Was The Craving To Be A One And Only People Which Impelled The Ancient Hebrews To Invent A One And Only God Whose One And Only People They Were To Be.

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

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.

All Leaders Strive To Turn Their Followers Into Children.

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 Judgement. When We Lose Our Individual Independence In The Corporateness Of A Mass Movement, We Find A New Freedom- Freedom To Hate, Bully, Lie, Torture, Murder And Betray Without Shame And Remorse. Herein Undoubtedly Lies Part Of The Attractiveness Of A Mass Movement

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.

The Hardest Thing To Cope With Is Not Selfishness Or Vanity Or Deceitfulness, But Sheer Stupidity.

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

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.

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.

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

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