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Unlike The Pattern Which Seems To Prevail In The Rest Of Life, In The Human Species The Weak Not Only Survive But Often Triumph Over The Strong. The Self-hatred Inherent In The Weak Unlocks Energies Far More Formidable Then Those Mobilized By An Ordinary Struggle For Existence.

-Eric Hoffer

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Unlike The Pattern Which

Eric Hoffer

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Unlike The Pattern Which Seems To Prevail In The Rest Of Life, In The Human Species The Weak Not Only Survive But Often Triumph Over The Strong. The Self-hatred Inherent In The Weak Unlocks Energies Far More Formidable Then Those Mobilized By An Ordinary Struggle For Existence.

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

Rudeness Is A Weak Imitation Of Strength.

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

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.

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

Though They Seem At Opposite Poles, Fanatics Of All Kinds Are Actually Crowded Together At One End. It Is The Fanatic And The Moderate Who Are Poles Apart And Never Meet.

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

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 .

The Truth Seems To Be That Propaganda On Its Own Cannot Force Its Way Into Unwilling Minds; Neither Can It Inculcate Something Wholly New; Nor Can It Keep People Persuaded Once They Have Ceased To Believe. It Penetrates Into Minds Already Open, And Rather Than Instill Opinion It Articulates And Justifies Opinions Already Present In The Minds Of Its Recipients.

Rudeness Luxuriates In The Absence Of Self-respect.

The Suspicious Mind Believes More Than It Doubts. It Believes In A Formidable And Ineradicable Evil Lurking In Every Person.

It Is Not At All Simple To Understand The Simple.

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

There Is No Telling To What Extremes Of Cruelty And Ruthlessness A Man Will Go When He Is Freed From The Fears, Hesitations, Doubts And The Vague Stirrings Of Decency That Go With Individual Judgement. When We Lose Our Individual Independence In The Corporateness Of A Mass Movement, We Find A New Freedom- Freedom To Hate, Bully, Lie, Torture, Murder And Betray Without Shame And Remorse. Herein Undoubtedly Lies Part Of The Attractiveness Of A Mass Movement

To 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.

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

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 Breeds Pride And Arrogance.

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

Exaggeration Is

There Is A Perfect Ant, A Perfect Bee, But Man Is Perpetually Unfinished...moreover, The Incurable Unfinishedness Keeps Man Perpetually Immature, Perpetually Capable Of Learning And Growing.

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

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

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.

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.

True Loyalty Between Individuals Is Possible Only In A Loose And Relatively Free Society.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Cannot Hate Those Who We Despise.

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.

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

Language Was Invented To Ask Questions.

It Is A Paradox That In Our Time Of Drastic Rapid Change, When The Future Is In Our Midst Devouring The Present Before Our Eyes, We Have Never Been Less Certain About What Is Ahead Of Us.

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

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

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

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

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

The Readiness To Praise Others Indicates A Desire For Excellence And Perhaps An Ability To Realize It.

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

However Much We Guard Against It, We Tend To Shape Ourselves In The Image Others Have Of Us.

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.

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.

One Of The Marks Of A Truly Vigorous Society Is The Ability To Dispense With Passion As A Midwife Of Action - The Ability To Pass Directly From Thought To Action.

The Proselytizing Fanatic Strengthens His Own Faith By Converting Others. The Creed Whose Legitimacy Is Most Easily Challenged Is Likely To Develop The Strongest Proselytizing Impulse.

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

Intolerance Is The ''do Not Touch'' Sign On Something That Cannot Bear Touching. We Do Not Mind Having Our Hair Ruffled, But We Will Not Tolerate Any Familiarity With The Toupee Which Covers Our Baldness.

You Rarely Find A Nonconformist Who Goes It Alone.

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

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.

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

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

They Who Lack Talent Expect Things To Happen Without Effort. They Ascribe Failure To A Lack Of Inspiration Or Ability, Or To Misfortune, Rather Than To Insufficient Application. At The Core Of Every True Talent There Is An Awareness Of The Difficulties Inherent In Any Achievement, And The Confidence That By Persistence And Patience Something Worthwhile Will Be Realized. Thus Talent Is A Species 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 Wisdom Of Others Remains Dull Till It Is Writ Over With Our Own Blood. We Are Essentially Apart From The World; It Bursts Into Our Consciousness Only When It Sinks Its Teeth And Nails Into Us.

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.

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

We Do Not Usually Look For Allies When We Love. Indeed, We Often Look On Those Who Love With Us As Rivals And Trespassers. But We Always Look For Allies When We Hate.

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

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

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

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

Totalitarianism Spells Simplification: An Enormous Reduction In The Variety Of Aims, Motives, Interests, Human Types, And, Above All, In The Categories And Units Of Power.

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

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.

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

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.

Creativity Is Discontent Translated Into Arts.

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

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.

We Run Fastest And Farthest When We Run From Ourselves.

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

We Are More Ready To Try The Untried When What We Do Is Inconsequential. Hence The Remarkable Fact That Many Inventions Had Their Birth As Toys.

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

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

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.

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.

Some People Have No Original Ideas Because They Do Not Think Well Enough Of Themselves To Consider Their Ideas Worth Noticing And Developing.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Even The Sober Desire For Progress Is Sustained By Faith—faith In The Intrinsic Goodness Of Human Nature And In The Omnipotence Of Science. It Is A Defiant And Blasphemous Faith, Not Unlike That Held By The Men Who Set Out To Build A "city And A Tower, Whose Top May Reach Unto Heaven" And Who Believed That "nothing Will Be Restrained From Them, Which They Have Imagined To Do.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Successful Action Tends To Become An End In Itself.

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

How Rare It Is To Come Across A Piece Of Writing That Is Unambiguous, Unqualified, And Also Unblurred By Understatements Or Subtleties, And Yet At The Same Time Urbane And Tolerant. It Is A Vice Of The Scientific Method When Applied To Human Affairs That It Fosters Hemming And Hawing And A Scrupulousness That Easily Degenerates Into Obscurity And Meaninglessness.

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.

For Men To Plunge Headlong Into An Undertaking Of Vast Change, They Must Be Intensely Discontented Yet Not Destitute, And They Must Have The Feeling That By The Possession Of Some Potent Doctrine, Infallible Leader Or Some New Technique They Have Access To A Source Of Irresistible Power.

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.

Every Extreme Attitude Is A Fight From The Self.

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 Difficult And Risky Task Of Meeting And Mastering The New . . . Is Not Undertaken By The Vanguard Of Society But By Its Rear. It Is The Misfits, Failures, Fugitives, Outcasts And Their Like Who Are Among The First To Grapple With The New.

It Is 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

We Lie Loudest When We Lie To Ourselves.

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.

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.

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

Absolute Faith Corrupts As Absolutely As Absolute Power.

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

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 History Of This Country Was Made Largely By People Who Wanted To Be Left Alone. Those Who Could Not Thrive When Left To Themselves Never Felt At Ease In America.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

There Is 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Self-righteousness Is A Loud Din Raised To Drown The Voice Of Guilt Within Us.

To Believe That If Only We Had This Or That We Would Be Happy, Or To Pursue Any Excessive Desire, Diverts Us From Seeing That Happiness Depends On An Adequate Self.

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 Not So Much The Example Of Others We Imitate As The Reflection Of Ourselves In Their Eyes And The Echo Of Ourselves In Their Words.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

All Leaders Strive To Turn Their Followers Into Children.

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."

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.

When People Are Free To Do As They Please, They Usually Imitate Each Other. Originality Is Deliberate And Forced, And Partakes Of The Nature Of A Protest. A Society Which Gives Unlimited Freedom To The Individual, More Often Than Not Attains A Disconcerting Sameness.

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.

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

Charlatanism Of Some Degree Is Indispensable To Effective Leadership.

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

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

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.

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.

Power Corrupts The Few, While Weakness Corrupts The Many.

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

The 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The Monstrous Evils Of The Twentieth Century Have Shown Us That The Greediest Money Grubbers Are Gentle Doves Compared With Money-hating Wolves Like Lenin, Stalin, And Hitler, Who In Less Than Three Decades Killed Or Maimed Nearly A Hundred Million Men, Women, And Children And Brought Untold Suffering To A Large Portion Of Mankind.

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.

Man Was Nature's Mistake She Neglected To Finish Him And She Has Never Ceased Paying For Her Mistake.

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.

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

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.

The Ability To Get Along Without An Exceptional Leader Is The Mark Of Social Vigor.

To Change Everything, Simply Change Your Attitude.

Change Your Attitude

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Laughter To Begin With Was Probably Glee At The Misfortunes Of Others. The Baring Of The Teeth In Laughter Hints At Its Savage Ancestry. Animals Have No Malice, Hence Also No Laughter. They Never Savor The Sudden Glory Of Schadenfreude. It Was Its Infectious Quality That Made Of Laughter A Medium Of Mutuality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

We See Through Others Only When We See Through Ourselves.

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Carrie Brownstein

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