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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.

-Eric Hoffer

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To Make Of Human

Eric Hoffer

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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.

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The Savior Who Wants To Turn Men Into Angels Is As Much A Hater Of Human Nature As The Totalitarian Despot Who Wants To Turn Them Into Puppets.

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

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

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

There Is No Reason Why The Profoundest Thoughts Should Not Make Easy And Exciting Reading. A Profound Thought Is An Exciting Thing As Exciting As A Detective's Deductions Or Hunches. The Simpler The Words In Which A Thought Is Expressed The More Stimulating Its Effect.

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

We Are More Prone To Generalize The Bad Than The Good. We Assume That The Bad Is More Potent And Contagious.

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

It Is To Escape The Responsibility For Failure That The Weak So Eagerly Throw Themselves Into Grandiose Undertakings.

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

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

What Pascal Said Of An Effective Religion Is True Of Any Effective Doctrine: It Must Be "contrary To Nature, To Common Sense And To Pleasure.

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

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.

Those Who Are In Love With The Present Can Be Cruel And Corrupt But Not Genuinely Vicious. They Cannot Be Methodically And Consistently Ruthless.

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.

Thought Is A Process Of Exaggeration. The Refusal To Exaggerate Is Not Infrequently An Alibi For The Disinclination To Think Or Praise.

Exaggeration Is

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

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

Faith In Humanity, In Posterity, In The Destiny Of One's Religion, Nation, Race, Party Or Family-what Is It But The Visualization Of That Eternal Something To Which We Attach The Self That Is About To Be Annihilated?

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

No Matter What Our Achievements Might Be, We Think Well Of Ourselves Only In Rare Moments. We Need People To Bear Witness Against Our Inner Judge, Who Keeps Book On Our Shortcomings And Transgressions. We Need People To Convince Us That We Are Not As Bad As We Think We Are.

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

Unpredictability, Too, Can Become Monotonous.

Unpredictability

You Cannot Gauge The Intelligence Of An American By Talking With Him; You Must Work With Him. The American Polishes And Refines His Way Of Doing Things-even The Most Commonplace-the Way The French Of The 17th Century Polished Their Maxims.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Ratio Between Supervisory And Producing Personnel Is Always Highest Where The Intellectuals Are In Power. In A Communist Country It Takes Half The Population To Supervise The Other Half.

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

Those In Possession Of Absolute Power Can Not Only Prophesy And Make Their Prophecies Come True, But They Can Also Lie And Make Their Lies Come True.

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

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.

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

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

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

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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.

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

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.

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.

By Circumstance And Perhaps Also By Inclination, I Think In Complete Intellectual Isolation. To Expect Others To Help Me Think Seems To Me Almost Like Expecting Them To Help Me Digest My Food.

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 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.

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

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

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

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.

[the Designated Or Chosen Leader Tries To] Articulate And Justify The Resentment Dammed Up In The Souls Of The Frustrated. He Kindles The Vision Of A Breathtaking Future So As To Justify The Sacrifice Of A Transitory Present. He Stages The World Of Make-believe So Indispensable For The Realization Of Self-sacrifice And United Action.

Our Present Addiction To Pollsters And Forecasters Is A Symptom Of Our Chronic Uncertainty About The Future... We Watch Our Experts Read The Entrails Of Statistical Tables And Graphs The Way The Ancients Watched Their Soothsayers Read The Entrails Of A Chicken.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

It Needs Fanatical Faith To Rationalize Our Cowardice.

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

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

We See Through Others Only When We See Through Ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Vehemence Is The Expression Of A Blind Effort To Support And Uphold Something That Can Never Stand On Its Own. Whether It Is Our Own Meaningless Self We Are Upholding, Or Some Doctrine Devoid Of Evidence, We Can Do It Only In A Frenzy Of Faith.

The Aspiration Toward Freedom Is The Most Essentially Human Of All Human Manifestations.

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

To Find The Cause Of Our Ills In Something Outside Ourselves, Something Specific That Can Be Spotted And Eliminated, Is A Diagnosis That Cannot Fail To Appeal. To Say That The Cause Of Our Troubles Is Not In Us But In The Jews , And Pass Immediately To The Extermination Of The Jews, Is A Prescription Likely To Find A Wide Acceptance.

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

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.

Someone Who Thinks The World Is Always Cheating Him Is Right. He Is Missing That Wonderful Feeling Of Trust In Someone Or Something.

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

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

It Is Not Love Of Self But Hatred Of Self Which Is At The Root Of The Troubles That Afflict Our World.

We Lie Loudest When We Lie To Ourselves.

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

By All Odds, Earliest Man, So Naked To The Elements And To Deadly Enemies, Should Have Existed In A State Of Constant Shock. We Find Him Instead The Only Lighthearted Being In A Deadly Serious Universe.... He Alone, With Childish Carelessness, Tinkered And Played, And Exerted Himself More In The Pursuit Of Superfluities Than Of Necessities. Yet The Tinkering And Playing, And The Fascination With The Nonessential, Were A Chief Source Of The Inventiveness Which Enabled Man To Prevail Over Better-equipped And More-purposeful Animals.

There Is A Powerful Craving In Most Of Us To See Ourselves As Instruments In The Hands Of Others And Thus Free Ourselves From The Responsibility For Acts Which Are Prompted By Our Own Questionable Inclinations And Impulses.

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

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.

Love-making Is Radical, While Marriage Is Conservative.

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

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

We Have Rudiments Of Reverence For The Human Body, But We Consider As Nothing The Rape Of The Human Mind.

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.

To Our Real, Naked Selves There Is Not A Thing On Earth Or In Heaven Worth Dying For. It Is Only When We See Ourselves As Actors In A Staged (and Therefore Unreal) Performance That Death Loses Its Frightfulness And Finality And Becomes An Act Of Make-believe And A Theatrical Gesture. It Is One Of The Main Tasks Of A Real Leader To Mask The Grim Reality Of Dying And Killing By Evoking In His Followers The Illusion That They Are Participating In A Grandiose Spectacle, A Solemn Or Lighthearted Dramatic Performance.

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.

To Most Of Us Nothing Is So Invisible As An Unpleasant Truth. Though It Is Held Before Our Eyes, Pushed Under Our Noses, Rammed Down Our Throats- We Know It Not.

Where Unity And Self-sacrifice Are Indispensable For The Normal Functioning Of Society, Everyday Life Is Likely To Be Either Religiofied (common Tasks Turned Into Holy Causes) Or Militarized.

The Capacity For Getting Along With Our Neighbor Depends To A Large Extent On The Capacity For Getting Along With Ourselves. The Self-respecting Individual Will Try To Be As Tolerant Of His Neighbor's Shortcomings As He Is Of His Own.

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

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

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.

Whenever We Proclaim The Uniqueness Of A Religion , A Truth , A Leader, A Nation, A Race, A Part Or A Holy Cause, We Are Also Proclaiming Our Own Uniqueness.

When We Do Not Do The One Thing We Ought To Do, We Have No Time For Anything Else - We Are The Busiest People In The World.

Our 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.

Our Achievements Speak For Themselves. What We Have To Keep Track Of Are Our Failures, Discouragements And Doubts. We Tend To Forget The Past Difficulties, The Many False Starts, And The Painful Groping. We See Our Past Achievements As The End Results Of A Clean Forward Thrust, And Our Present Difficulties As Signs Of Decline And Decay.

I Always Held My Flower In A Clenched Fist.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Faith, Enthusiasm, And Passionate Intensity In General Are Substitutes For The Self-confidence Born Of Experience And The Possession Of Skill. Where There Is The Necessary Skill To Move Mountains There Is No Need For The Faith That Moves Mountains.

Self Confidence

There Is Perhaps No Better Way Of Measuring The Natural Endowment Of A Soul Than By Its Ability To Transmute Dissatisfaction Into A Creative Impulse.

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."

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.

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

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.

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

The Original Insight Is Most Likely To Come When Elements Stored In Different Compartments Of The Mind Drift Into The Open, Jostle One Another, And Now And Then Form New Combinations.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Modern Man Is Weighed Down More By The Burden Of Responsibility Than By The Burden Of Sin. We Think Him More A Savior Who Shoulders Our Responsibilities Than Him Who Shoulders Our Sins. If Instead Of Making Decisions We Have But To Obey And Do Our Duty, We Feel It As A Sort Of Salvation.

Rudeness Luxuriates In The Absence Of Self-respect.

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

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

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

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

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

People Unfit For Freedom - Who Cannot Do Much With It - Are Hungry For Power. The Desire For Freedom Is An Attribute Of A "have" Type Of Self. It Says: Leave Me Alone And I Shall Grow, Learn, And Realize My Capacities. The Desire For Power Is Basically An Attribute Of A "have Not" Type Of Self.

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

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

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

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

In Human Affairs Every Solution Serves Only To Sharpen The Problem, To Show Us More Clearly What We Are Up Against. There Are No Final Solutions.

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.

Communists Are Frustrated Capitalists.

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 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.

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

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.

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

People In A Hurry Cannot Think, Cannot Grow, Nor Can They Decay. They Are Preserved In A State Of Perpetual Puerility.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

One Wonders Whether A Generation That Demands Instant Satisfaction Of All Its Needs And Instant Solution Of The World's Problems Will Produce Anything Of Lasting Value. Such A Generation, Even When Equipped With The Most Modern Technology, Will Be Essentially Primitive It Will Stand In Awe Of Nature, And Submit To The Tutelage Of Medicine Men.

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.

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

However Much We Talk Of The Inexorable Laws Governing The Life Of Individuals And Of Societies, We Remain At The Bottom Convinced That In Human Affairs Everything In More Or Less Fortuitous. We Do Not Even Believe In The Inevitability Of Our Own Death. Hence The Difficulty Of Deciphering The Present, Of Detecting The Seeds Of Things To Come As They Germinate Before Our Eyes. We Are Not Attuned To Seeing The Inevitable.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

For Many People, An Excuse Is Better Than An Achievement Because An Achievement, No Matter How Great, Leaves You Having To Prove Yourself Again In The Future; But An Excuse Can Last For Life.

The 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.

There Would Be No Society If Living Together Depended Upon Understanding Each Other.

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

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.

To The Creative Individual All Experience Is Seminal-all Events Are Equidistant From New Ideasand Insights.

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

In An Adequate Social Order, The Untalented Should Be Able To Acquire A Sense Of Usefulness And Of Growth Without Interfering With The Development Of Talent Around Them

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

People With A Sense Of Fulfillment Think It Is A Good World And Would Like To Conserve It As It Is, While The Frustrated Favor Radical Change.

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

Power Corrupts The Few, While Weakness Corrupts The Many.

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

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.

An Easygoing Person Is Probably More Accessible To The Realization Of Eternity--the Endless Flow Of Life And Death--than One Who Takes His Prospects And Duties Overseriously. It Is The Overserious Who Are Truly Frivolous.

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

The 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.

Absolute Faith Corrupts As Absolutely As Absolute Power.

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

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

It Is The Stretched Soul That Makes Music, And Souls Are Stretched By The Pull Of Opposites-opposite Bents, Tastes, Yearnings, Loyalties. Where There Is No Polarity-where Energies Flow Smoothly In One Direction-there Will Be Much Doing But No Music.

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

To The Old, The New Is Usually Bad News.

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