Quote

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.

Eric Hoffer

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Eric Hoffer
Age: 84 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 25
Died: 1983
Died: May 21
Philosopher
Psychologist
Writer
New York City
New York
Failing
Jew
Eliminated
Outside
Immediately
Ills
Cause
Specific
Prescriptions
Trouble
Acceptance
Diagnosis
Causes
Likely
Troubles
Cannot
Wide
Appeal
Spotted
Find
Fail
Jews
Extermination
Something
Pass
Appeals
Prescription

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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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EVERY intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.
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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.
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Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
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The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
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We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
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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.
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In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.
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Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
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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.
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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
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When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
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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 .
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We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
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There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
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