Eric Hoffer ( 10 of 253 )
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they read more
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
The burning conviction that we have a holy duty towards others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves read more
The burning conviction that we have a holy duty towards others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like a giving hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
Whence come these hatreds...? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, read more
Whence come these hatreds...? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt and other shortcomings of the self. Self-contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others- and there is a most determined and persistent effort to mask this switch.
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of read more
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of thr majority in read more
The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of thr majority in the middle.
The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to read more
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to an empty head.
Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable; when conditions have so improved that an ideal state seems read more
Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable; when conditions have so improved that an ideal state seems almost within reach. A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed. De Tocqueville in his researches into the state of society in France before the revolution was struck by the discovery that "in no one of the periods which have followed the Revolution of 1789 has the national prosperity of France augmented more rapidly than it did in the twenty years preceding that event." He is forced to conclude that "the French found their position the more intolerable the better it became.
