Background Image

...

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.

-Eric Hoffer

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Most Gifted Members

Eric Hoffer

...

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.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Eric Hoffer

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

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

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

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

Universities Are An Example Of Organizations Dominated Wholly By Intellectuals; Yet, Outside Pure Science, They Have Not Been An Optimal Milieu For The Unfolding Of Creative Talents. In Neither Art, Music, Literature, Technology And Social Theory, Nor Planning Have The Universities Figured As Originators Or As Seedbeds Of New Talents And Energies.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Real "haves" Are They Who Can Acquire Freedom, Self-confidence, And Even Riches Without Depriving Others Of Them. They Acquire All Of These By Developing And Applying Their Potentialities. On The Other Hand, The Real "have Nots" Are They Who Cannot Have Aught Except By Depriving Others Of It. They Can Feel Free Only By Diminishing The Freedom Of Others, Self-confident By Spreading Fear And Dependence Among Others, And Rich By Making Others Poor.

Self Confidence

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

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

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

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.

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 Desire To Belong Is Partly A Desire To Lose Oneself.

The Greatest Weariness Comes From Work Not Done.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

We Find It Hard To Apply The Knowledge Of Ourselves To Our Judgment Of Others. The Fact That We Are Never Of One Kind, That We Never Love Without Reservations And Never Hate With All Our Being Cannot Prevent Us From Seeing Others As Wholly Black Or White.

A Peculiar Side Of Credulity Is That It Is Often Joined With A Proneness To Imposture. The Association Of Believing And Lying Is Not Characteristic Solely Of Children. They Inability Or Unwillingness To See Things As They Are Promotes Both Gullibility And Charlatanism.

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

Practically All Writers And Artists Are Aware Of Their Destiny And See Themselves As Actors In A Fateful Drama. With Me, Nothing Is Momentous: Obscure Youth, Glorious Old Age, Fateful Coincidences - Nothing Really Matters. I Have Written A Number Of Good Sentences. I Have Kept Free Of Delusions. I Know I Am Going To Die Soon.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It Is The Acquisition Of Skills In Particular, Irrespective Of Their Utility, That Is Potent In Making Life Meaningful. Since Man Has No Inborn Skills, The Survival Of The Species Has Depended On The Ability To Acquire And Perfect Skills. Hence The Mastery Of Skills Is A Uniquely Human Activity And Yields Deep Satisfaction.

We Run Fastest And Farthest When We Run From Ourselves.

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.

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 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.

What The Intellectual Craves Above All Else Is To Be Taken Seriously, To Be Treated As A Decisive Force In Shaping History. He Is Far More At Home In A Society That Weighs His Every Word And Keeps Close Watch On His Attitudes Then In A Society That Cares Not What He Says Or Does. He Would Rather Be Persecuted Than Ignored.

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

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.

We Clamor For Equality Chiefly In Matters In Which We Ourselves Cannot Hope To Obtain Excellence.

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

We Are Unified Both By Hating In Common And By Being Hated In Common.

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

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

Faith In A Holy Cause Is To A Considerable Extent A Substitute For Lost Faith In Ourselves.

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

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 .

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.

Our Credulity Is Greatest Concerning The Things We Know Least About. And Since We Know Least About Ourselves, We Are Ready To Believe All That Is Said About Us. Hence The Mysterious Power Of Both Flattery And Calumny.

My Writing Is Done In Railroad Yards While Waiting For A Freight, In The Fields While Waiting For A Truck, And At Noon After Lunch. Towns Are Too Distracting.

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.

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 Well-adjusted Make Poor Prophets.

Add A Few Drops Of Venom To A Half Truth And You Have An Absolute Truth.

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.

You Rarely Find A Nonconformist Who Goes It Alone.

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

The Greeks Invented Logic But Were Not Fooled By It.

We Need Not Only A Purpose In Life To Give Meaning To Our Existence But Also Something To Give Meaning To Our Suffering. We Need As Much Something To Suffer For As Something To Live For.

Woe To Him Inside A Non-conformist Clique Who Does Not Conform To Non-conformity.

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.

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.

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.

It Needs Fanatical Faith To Rationalize Our Cowardice.

Anger Is A Prelude To Courage.

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.

It Is Apparently Vital That We Should Be In The Dark About Ourselves Not To Be Clear About Our Intentions, Fears, And Hopes. There Is A Stubborn Effort In Us To Set Up A Compact Screen Between Consciousness And The Self.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It Is Also Plausible That Those Movements With The Greatest Inner Contradiction And Between Profession And Practice - That Is To Say With A Strong Feeling Of Guilt - Are Likely To Be The Most Fervent In Imposing Their Faith On Others.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

...in The Shaping Of A Life, Chance And The Ability To Respond To Chance Are Everything.

No One Has A Right To Happiness.

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 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.

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

Those Of Little Faith Are Of Little Hatred.

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.

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

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

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

With Some People Solitariness Is An Escape Not From Others But From Themselves. For They See In The Eyes Of Others Only A Reflection Of Themselves.

Lack Of Sensitivity Is Perhaps Basically An Unawareness Of Ourselves.

We Have To Adjust Ourselves, And Every Radical Adjustment Is A Crisis In Self-esteem: We Undergo A Test, We Have To Prove Ourselves.

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

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.

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.

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

If Anybody Asks Me What I Have Accomplished, I Will Say All I Have Accomplished Is That I Have Written A Few Good Sentences.

There Is In Even The Most Selfish Passion A Large Element Of Self-abnegation. It Is Startling To Realize That What We Call Extreme Self-seeking Is Actually Self-renunciation. The Miser, Health Addict, Glory Chaser And Their Like Are Not Far Behind The Selfless In The Exercise Of Self-sacrifice.

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

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?

When People Are Bored It Is Primarily With Themselves.

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.

In A Trader-dominated Society, The Scribe Is Usually Kept Out Of The Management Of Affairs, But It Given A More Or Less Free Hand In The Cultural Field. By Frustrating The Scribe's Craving For Commanding Action, The Trader Draws Upon Himself The Scribe's Wrath And Scorn.

Creativity Is The Ability To Introduce Order Into The Randomness Of Nature.

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

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.

We Are Least Open To Precise Knowledge Concerning The Things We Are Most Vehement About.

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

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

Facts Are Counterrevolutionary.

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

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.

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.

Marriage Has For Women Many Equivalents Of Joining A Mass Movement. It Offers Them A New Purpose In Life, A New Future And A New Identity (a New Name). The Boredom Of Spinsters And Of Women Who Can No Longer Find Joy And Fulfillment In Marriage Stems From An Awareness Of A Barren, Spoiled Life. By Embracing A Holy Cause And Dedicating Their Energies And Substance To Its Advancement, They Find A New Life Full Of Purpose And Meaning.

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

...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.

All Leaders Strive To Turn Their Followers Into Children.

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

The Opposite Of The Religious Fanatic Is Not The Fanatical Atheist But The Gentle Cynic Who Cares Not Whether There Is A God Or Not.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Can Be Absolutely Certain Only About Things We Do Not Understand.

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.

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.

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.

Where Freedom Is Real, Equality Is The Passion Of The Masses. Where Equality Is Real, Freedom Is The Passion Of A Small Minority.

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

To Change Everything, Simply Change Your Attitude.

Change Your Attitude

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

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.

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

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

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.

It Is The Fate Of Every Great Achievement To Be Pounced Upon By Pedants And Imitators Who Drain It Of Life And Turn It Into An Orthodoxy Which Stifles All Stirrings Of Originality.

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

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

A Dissenting Minority Feels Free Only When It Can Impose Its Will On The Majority: What It Abominates Most Is The Dissent Of The Majority.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Products Of The Human Mind, Simplicity Marks The End Of A Process Of Refining, While Complexity Marks A Primitive Stage. Michelangelo 's Definition Of Art As The Purgation Of Superfluities Suggests That The Creative Effort Consists Largely In The Elimination Of That Which Complicates And Confuses A Pattern.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Chemistry Of Dissatisfaction Is As The Chemistry Of Some Marvelously Potent Tar. In It Are The Building Stones Of Explosives, Stimulants, Poisons, Opiates, Perfumes And Stenches.

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

Changing The World

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

The Hatred And Cruelty Which Have Their Source In Selfishness Are Ineffectual Things Compared With The Venom And Ruthlessness Born Of Selflessness.

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.

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.

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

...that Genius Is A Rare Exception (:) It's Not True. Talent And Genius Have Been Wasted On Enormous Scale Throughout Our History; This Is All I Know For Sure.

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

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.

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

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.

We See Through Others Only When We See Through Ourselves.

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

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.

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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

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

Capitalism Is At Its Liberating Best In A Noncapitalist Environment. The Crypto-businessman Is The True Revolutionary In A Communist Country.

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

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.

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.

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.

Trending Author

Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Wynton Marsalis

Category