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

-Eric Hoffer

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The Paleolithic Hunters Who

Eric Hoffer

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

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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.

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

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

I Have A Premonition That Will Not Leave Me: As It Goes With Israel So Will It Go With All Of Us. Should Israel Perish, The Holocaust Will Be Upon Us.

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.

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.

Compassion Alone Stands Apart From The Continuous Traffic Between Good And Evil Proceeding Within Us.

Never Have The Young Taken Themselves So Seriously, And The Calamity Is That They Are Listened To And Deferred To By So Many Adults.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

One Might Equate Growing Up With A Mistrust Of Words. A Mature Person Trusts His Eyes More Than His Ears. Irrationality Often Manifests Itself In Upholding The Word Against The Evidence Of The Eyes. Children, Savages And True Believers Remember Far Less What They Have Seen Than What They Have Heard.

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.

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

The 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.

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

It Is The Around-the-corner Brand Of Hope That Prompts People To Action, While The Distant Hope Acts As An Opiate.

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

Love-making Is Radical, While Marriage Is Conservative.

It Needs Fanatical Faith To Rationalize Our Cowardice.

Creativity Is Discontent Translated Into Arts.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Should Israel Perish, The Holocaust Will Be Upon Us.

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.

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

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

Perhaps Our Originality Manifests Itself Most Strikingly In What We Do With That Which We Did Not Originate. To Discover Something Wholly New Can Be A Matter Of Chance, Of Idle Tinkering, Or Even Of The Chronic Dissatisfaction Of The Untalented.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

A Free Society Is As Much A Threat To The Intellectual's Sense Of Worth As An Automated Economy Is To The Workingman's Sense Of Worth. Any Social Order That Can Function With A Minimum Of Leadership Will Be Anathema To The Intellectual.

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

No One Has A Right To Happiness.

Nothing Comes Easily. My Work Smells Of Sweat.

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

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Communists Are Frustrated Capitalists.

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

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

The Self-despisers Are Less Intent On Their Own Increase Than On The Diminution Of Others. Where Self-esteem Is Unobtainable, Envy Takes The Place Of Greed.

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

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

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

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

The Birth Of The New Constitutes A Crisis, And Its Mastery Calls For A Crude And Simple Cast Of Mind -- The Mind Of A Fighter -- In Which The Virtues Of Tribal Cohesion And Fierceness And Infantile Credulity And Malleability Are Paramount. Thus Every New Beginning Recapitulates In Some Degree Man's First Beginning.

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.

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

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

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

It Is Probably True That Business Corrupts Everything It Touches. It Corrupts Politics, Sports, Literature, Art, Labor Unions And So On. But Business Also Corrupts And Undermines Monolithic Totalitarianism. Capitalism Is At Its Liberating Best In A Noncapitalist Environment.

Religion Is Not A Matter Of God, Church, Holy Cause, Etc. These Are But Accessories. The Source Of Religious Preoccupation Is In The Self, Or Rather The Rejection Of The Self. Dedication In The Obverse Side Of Self-rejection. Man Alone Is A Religious Animal Because, As Montaigne Points Out, It Is A Malady Confined To Man, And Not Seen In Any Other Creature, To Hate And Despise Ourselves.

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?

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

Charlatanism Of Some Degree Is Indispensable To Effective Leadership.

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

The Autonomous Individual, Striving To Realize Himself And Prove His Worth, Has Created All That Is Great In Literature, Art, Music, Science And Technology. The Autonomous Individual, Also, When He Can Neither Realize Himself Nor Justify His Existence By His Own Efforts, Is A Breeding Call Of Frustration, And The Seed Of The Convulsions Which Shake Our World To Its Foundations.

The Basic Test Of Freedom Is Perhaps Less In What We Are Free To Do Than In What We Are Free Not To Do.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Link Between Ideas And Action Is Rarely Direct. There Is Almost Always An Intermediate Step In Which The Idea Is Overcome.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Unpredictability, Too, Can Become Monotonous.

Unpredictability

This Food-and-shelter Theory Concerning Man's Efforts Is Without Insight. The Desire For Praise Is More Imperative Than The Desire For Food And Shelter

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.

There Is A Time When The Word "eventually" Has The Soothing Effect Of A Promise, And A Time When The Word Evokes In Us Bitterness And Scorn.

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

When Hopes And Dreams Are Loose In The Streets, It Is Well For The Timid To Lock Doors, Shutter Windows And Lie Low Until The Wrath Has Passed. For There Is Often A Monstrous Incongruity Between The Hopes, However Noble And Tender, And The Action Which Follows Them. It Is As If Ivied Maidens And Garlanded Youths Were To Herald The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse .

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It Is By Its Promise Of A Sense Of Power That Evil Often Attracts The Weak.

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.

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

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

Every Extreme Attitude Is A Fight From The Self.

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.

Failure In The Management Of Practical Affairs Seems To Be A Qualification For Success In The Management Of Public Affairs.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Rudeness Is The Weak Man's Limitation Of Strength.

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.

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

Anger Is A Prelude To Courage.

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

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.

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

Sensuality Reconciles Us With The Human Race. The Misanthropy Of The Old Is Due In Large Part To The Fading Of The Magic Glow Of Desire.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Compassion Is The Antitoxin Of The Soul.

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

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

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

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.

Lack Of Sensitivity Is Perhaps Basically An Unawareness Of Ourselves.

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

The Quality Of Ideas Seems To Play A Minor Role In Mass Movement Leadership. What Counts Is The Arrogant Gesture, The Complete Disregard Of The Opinion Of Others, The Singlehanded Defiance Of The World.

Men Weary As Much Of Not Doing The Things They Want To Do As Of Doing The Things They Do Not Want To Do.

Facts Are Counterrevolutionary.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Fanatical Communist Refuses To Believe Any Unfavorable Report Or Evidence About Russia, Nor Will He Be Disillusioned By Seeing With His Own Eyes The Cruel Misery Inside The Soviet Promised Land. It Is The True Believer's Ability To "shut His Eyes And Stop His Ears" To Facts That Do Not Deserve To Be Either Seen Or Heard Which Is The Source Of His Unequaled Fortitude And Constancy. He Cannot Be Frightened By Danger, Nor Disheartened By Obstacles, Nor Baffled By Contradictions Because He Denies Their Existence.

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

Whenever You Trace The Origin Of A Skill Or Practices Which Played A Crucial Role In The Ascent Of Man, We Usually Reach The Realm Of Play.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

We Often Use Strong Language Not To Express A Powerful Emotion But To Evoke It In Us.

We See Through Others Only When We See Through Ourselves.

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

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

The Greeks Invented Logic But Were Not Fooled By It.

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Children Are The Keys Of Paradise.

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.

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

It Is Easier To Love Humanity As A Whole Than To Love One's Neighbor. ... Some Of The Worst Tyrannies Of Our Day Genuinely Are "vowed" To The Service Of Mankind, Yet Can Function Only By Pitting Neighbor Against Neighbor. The All-seeing Eye Of A Totalitarian Regime Is Usually The Watchful Eye Of The Next-door Neighbor. In A Communist State Love Of Neighbor May Be Classed As Counter-revolutionary.

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

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.

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.

Every Device Employed To Bolster Individual Freedom Must Have As Its Chief Purpose The Impairment Of The Absoluteness Of Power. The Indications Are That Such An Impairment Is Brought About Not By Strengthening The Individual And Pitting Him Against The Possessors Of Power, But By Distributing And Diversifying Power And Pitting One Category Or Unit Of Power Against The Other. Where Power Is One, The Defeated Individual, However Strong And Resourceful, Can Have No Refuge And No Recourse.

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

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