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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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There Is In Even

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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

...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.

We See Through Others Only When We See Through Ourselves.

All Mass Movements Strive, Therefore, To Interpose A Fact-proof Screen Between The Faithful And The Realities Of The World. They Do This By Claiming That The Ultimate And Absolute Truth Is Already Embodied In Their Doctrine And That There Is No Truth Nor Certitude Outside It. The Facts On Which The True Believer Bases His Conclusions Must Not Be Derived From His Experience Or Observation But From Holy Writ.

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.

Communists Are Frustrated Capitalists.

There Is Nothing More Explosive Than A Skilled Population Condemned To Inaction. Such A Population Is Likely To Become A Hotbed Of Extremism And Intolerance, And Be Receptive To Any Proselytizing Ideology, However Absurd And Vicious, Which Promises Vast Action.

When Our Individual Interests And Prospects Do Not Seem Worth Living For, We Are In Desperate Need For Something Apart From Us To Live For. All Forms Of Dedication, Devotion, Loyalty And Self-surrender Are In Essence A Desperate Clinging To Something Which Might Give Worth And Meaning To Our Futile, Spoiled Lives.

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

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.

We Can Never Have Enough Of That Which We Really Do Not Want.

In The Alchemy Of Man's Soul Almost All Noble Attributes- Courage, Honor, Love, Hope, Faith, Duty, Loyalty, And So On - Can Be Transmuted Into Ruthlessness. Compassion Alone Stands Apart From The Continuous Traffic Between Good And Evil Proceeding Within Us. Compassion Is The Antitoxin Of The Soul: Where There Is Compassion, Even The Most Poisonous Impulses Remain Relatively Harmless.

A Passionate Obsession With The Outside World Or The Private Lives Of Others Is An Attempt To Compensate For A Lack Of Meaning In One's Own Life

Vaguely At First, Then More Distinctly, I Realized That Man Is An Eternal Stranger On This Planet.

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.

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.

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

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

No Totalitarian Censor Can Approach The Implacability Of The Censor Who Controls The Line Of Communication Between The Outer World And Our Consciousness. Nothing Is Allowed To Reach Us Which Might Weaken Our Confidence And Lower Our Morale. To Most Of Us Nothing Is So Invisible As An Unpleasant Truth.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

Up To Now, America Has Not Been A Good Milieu For The Rise Of A Mass Movement. What Starts Out Here As A Mass Movement Ends Up As A Racket, A Cult, Or A Corporation.

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?

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

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.

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

It Is Doubtful If The Oppressed Ever Fight For Freedom. They Fight For Pride And Power - Power To Oppress Others. The Oppressed Want Above All To Imitate Their Oppressors; They Want To Retaliate.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

How Terribly Hard And Almost Impossible It Is To Tell The Truth. More Than Anything Else, The Artist In Us Prevents Us From Telling Aught As It Really Happened. We Deal With The Truth As The Cook Deals With Meat And Vegetables.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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. They Know That Basic Human Problems Can Have No Final Solutions, That Our Freedom, Justice, Equality, Etc. Are Far From Absolute, And That The Good Life Is Compounded Of Half Measures, Compromises, Lesser Evils, And Gropings Toward The Perfect. The Rejection Of Approximations And The Insistence On Absolutes Are The Manifestation Of A Nihilism That Loathes Freedom, Tolerance, And Equity.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

There Is No Reason To Believe That The Nature Of The Violent Minorities Is Now Greatly Different From What It Was In The Past. What Has Changed Is The Will And Ability Of The Majority To React.

Actual Creativeness Is A Matter Of Moments. One Has To Piece Together The Minute Grains To Make A Lump. And It Is So Easy To Miss The Momentary Flashes, It Is Like Sluicing In Placer Mining. He Who Lets The Flakes Float By Has Nothing To Show For His Trouble.

Youth Itself Is A Talent, A Perishable Talent.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Man Is A Luxury-loving Animal. Take Away Play, Fancies, And Luxuries, And You Will Turn Man Into A Dull, Sluggish Creature, Barely Energetic Enough To Obtain A Bare Subsistence. A Society Becomes Stagnant When Its People Are Too Rational Or Too Serious To Be Tempted By Baubles.

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

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.

Often, The Thing We Pursue Most Passionately Is But A Substitute For The One Thing We Really Want And Cannot Have.

A Low Capacity For Getting Along With Those Near Us Often Goes Hand In Hand With A High Receptivity To The Idea Of The Brotherhood Of Men.

Brotherhood Of Man

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

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.

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

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

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

In Every Passionate Pursuit, The Pursuit Counts More Than The Object Pursued.

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.

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

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.

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

One Is Not Quite Certain That Creativeness In The Arts, Literature, And Science Functions Best In An Environment Of Absolute Freedom. Chances Are That A Relatively Mild Tyranny Stimulates Creativeness.

The Search For Happiness Is One Of The Chief Sources Of Unhappiness.

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

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

Nothing Comes Easily. My Work Smells Of Sweat.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Unless A Man Has Talents To Make Something Of Himself, Freedom Is An Irksome Burden. Of What Avail Is Freedom To Choose If The Self Be Ineffectual? We Join A Mass Movement To Escape Individual Responsibility, Or, In The Words Of The Ardent Young Nazi, "to Be Free From Freedom."

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

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

People Haunted By The Purposelessness Of Their Lives Try To Find A New Content Not Only By Dedicating Themselves To A Holy Cause But Also By Nursing A Fanatical Grievance. A Mass Movement Offers Them Unlimited Opportunities For Both.

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.

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

One Word Characterizes The Most Strenuous Of The Efforts For The Advancement Of Science That I Have Made Perservereingly During Fifty-five Years; That Word Is Failure

Nature Is A Self-made Machine, More Perfectly Automated Than Any Automated Machine. To Create Something In The Image Of Nature Is To Create A Machine, And It Was By Learning The Inner Working Of Nature That Man Became A Builder Of Machines.

The 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.

To The Frustrated, Freedom From Responsibility Is More Attractive Than Freedom From Restraint.

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

Unpredictability, Too, Can Become Monotonous.

Unpredictability

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

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

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.

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

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.

Glory Is Largely A Theatrical Concept. There Is No Striving For Glory Without A Vivid Awareness Of An Audience... The Desire To Escape Or Camouflage Their Unsatisfactory Selves Develops In The Frustrated A Facility For Pretending -- For Making A Show -- And Also A Readiness To Identify Themselves Wholly With An Imposing Spectacle.

All Leaders Strive To Turn Their Followers Into Children.

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

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.

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.

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.

Radicalism Itself Ceases To Be Radical When Absorbed Mainly In Preserving Its Control Over A Society Or An Economy.

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Crimes Of The Twentieth Century Were Committed Not By Money-grubbing Capitalists But By Dedicated Idealists. Lenin, Stalin, And Hitler Were Contemptuous Of Money. The Passage From The Nineteenth To The Twentieth Century Has Been A Passage From Considerations Of Money To Considerations Of Power.

Ours Is A Golden Age Of Minorities. At No Time In The Past Have Dissident Minorities Felt So Much At Home And Had So Much Room To Throw Their Weight Around. They Speak And Act As If They Were "the People," And What They Abominate Most Is The Dissent Of The Majority.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I Can Never Forget That One Of The Most Gifted, Best Educated Nations In The World, Of Its Own Free Will, Surrendered Its Fate Into The Hands Of A Maniac.

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

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

Absolute Power Corrupts Even When Exercised For Humane Purposes. The Benevolent Despot Who Sees Himself As A Shepherd Of The People Still Demands From Others The Submissiveness Of Sheep. The Taint Inherent In Absolute Power Is Not Its Inhumanity But Its Anti-humanity.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Nonconformists Travel As A Rule In Bunches. You Rarely Find A Nonconformist Who Goes It Alone. And Woe To Him Inside A Nonconformist Clique Who Does Not Conform With Nonconformity.

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

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

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.

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

Every Intense Desire Is Perhaps Basically A Desire To Be Different From What We Are.

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

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.

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

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

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

We Are Ready To Die For An Opinion But Not For A Fact

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

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 .

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.

Starting Out From The Fact That The Frustrated Predominate Among The Early Adherents Of All Mass Movements And That They Usually Join Of Their Own Accord, It Is Assumed: 1) That Frustration Of Itself, Without Any Proselytizing Prompting From The Outside, Can Generate Most Of The Peculiar Characteristics Of The True Believer; 2) That An Effective Technique Of Conversion Consists Basically In The Inculcation And Fixation Of Proclivities And Responses Indigenous To The Frustrated Mind.

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

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

Power Corrupts The Few, While Weakness Corrupts The Many.

A Soul That Is Reluctant To Share Does Not As A Rule Have Much Of Its Own. Miserliness Is Here A Symptom Of Meagerness.

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

The Chief Burden Of The Frustrated Is The Consciousness Of A Blemished, Ineffectual Self, And Their Chief Desire Is To Slough Off The Unwanted Self And Begin A New Life. They Try To Realize This Desire Either By Finding A New Identity Or By Blurring And Camouflaging Their Individual Distinctness; And Both These Ends Are Reached By Imitation.

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

Self-righteousness Is A Manifestation Of Self-contempt.

Learners Inherit The Earth; While The Learned Find Themselves Beautifully Equipped To Deal With A World That No Longer Exists.

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

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

The Greeks Invented Logic But Were Not Fooled By It.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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