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| Eric Hoffer
A compilation of what outstanding people said or wrote at the age of 20 would make a collection of asinine pronouncements. Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat. Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: Where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself. Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice. Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are. Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem. Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us. Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves. In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak. It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. 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. It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny. It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do. Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity. 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. 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. 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. 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. Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented. Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength. Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives. The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves. The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully. The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything. The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. 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. The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical athiest but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. 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. 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. The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person. There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper. There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive. There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house. Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder. Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise. To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question. To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws. To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him. 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. We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends. 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. 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. You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy. |
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