tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-161094732024-02-28T14:42:33.697-08:00Eric Hoffer QuotesQuotes from everyone's favorite self-educated philosopher longshoreman.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-73608870936204861352012-07-15T15:51:00.000-07:002012-07-15T15:51:34.696-07:00The nineteenth century was naïve because it did not know the end of the story. It did not know what happens when dedicated idealists come to power; it did not know the intimate linkage between idealists and policemen, between being your brother’s keeper and being his jailkeeper.<br /><br />
It is disconcerting that present-day young who did not know Stalin and Hitler are displaying the old naïveté. After all that has happened they still do not know that you cannot build utopia without terror, and that before long terror is all that’s left.
<br /><br /><em>Before the Sabbath</em> (1974), p. 120Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-75588731414662110342012-07-15T15:43:00.000-07:002012-07-15T15:43:27.252-07:00The best education will not immunize a person against corruption by power. The best education does not automatically make people compassionate. We know this more clearly than any preceding generation. Our time has seen the best-educated society, situated in the heart of the most civilized part of the world, give birth to the most murderously vengeful government in history.<br /><br />
Forty years ago the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thought it self-evident that you would get a good government if you took power out of the hands of the acquisitive and gave it to the learned and the cultivated. At present, a child in kindergarten knows better than that.
<br /><br /><em>Before the Sabbath</em> (1974), p. 40-41Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-83442556372125832262012-07-15T15:34:00.001-07:002012-07-15T15:35:27.773-07:00Marx never did a day's work in his life, and knew as much about the proletariat as I do about chorus girls.
<br /><br /><em>Before the Sabbath</em> (1974), p. 60Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-36559092453023340922010-04-22T23:05:00.000-07:002010-04-22T23:35:02.199-07:00A world that did not lift a finger when Hitler was wiping out six million Jewish men, women, and children is now saying that the Jewish state of Israel will not survive if it does not come to terms with the Arabs. My feeling is that no one in this universe has the right and the competence to tell Israel what it has to do in order to survive. On the contrary, it is Israel that can tell us what to do. It can tell us that we shall not survive if we do not cultivate and celebrate courage, if we coddle traitors and deserters, bargain with terrorists, court enemies, and scorn friends. <br /><br /><em>Before the Sabbath</em> (1974), p. 6Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-48235849241240484692010-03-07T01:08:00.000-08:002010-03-07T01:08:04.154-08:00Modern 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.<br /><br /><em>The Passionate State of Mind</em>, aph. 84 (1955)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1128446960915384292010-03-06T00:00:00.000-08:002010-03-07T01:12:46.052-08:00One 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.<br /><br /><em>Reflections on the Human Condition</em>, aph. 60 (1973)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-74246752022114471132010-01-26T20:54:00.000-08:002010-01-26T20:59:46.939-08:00Our 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.... It is thus with most of us: we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay. <br /><br /><em>The Passionate State of Mind</em>, aph. 128-129 (1955).Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-77675203335147064512010-01-25T15:00:00.000-08:002010-01-25T15:49:07.285-08:00A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.<br /><br /><em>First Things, Last Things</em>, Ch. 8, "Thoughts on the Present"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-88973885537327613522010-01-24T01:07:00.000-08:002010-01-24T15:57:34.389-08:00People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.<br /><br /><em>Reflections on the Human Condition</em>, aph. 141 (1973).Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-56277890355418099452010-01-24T01:06:00.003-08:002010-01-24T01:06:46.130-08:00Unless 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."<br /><br /><em>The True Believer</em>, Section 26Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-75679473826072925622010-01-24T01:06:00.001-08:002010-01-24T01:06:13.040-08:00Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.<br /><br /><em>The Passionate State of Mind</em>, aph. 241Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-34172374895981123262010-01-24T01:03:00.001-08:002010-01-24T01:03:52.575-08:00Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.<br /><br /><em>Reflections on the Human Condition</em>, aph. 44 (1973)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-30316268685635440962010-01-24T01:01:00.000-08:002010-01-24T01:02:04.681-08:00The 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.<br /><br /><em>The Passionate State of Mind</em>, aph. 104 (1955)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1130220020182974292010-01-23T22:57:00.000-08:002010-01-25T15:51:15.561-08:00Those 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.<br /><br />They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an end to the "free for all." They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society.<br /><br /><em>The True Believer</em>, Section 28 (1951)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1127877216013299722010-01-23T20:12:00.000-08:002010-01-25T15:53:13.546-08:00Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.<br /> <br /><em>The True Believer</em>, Section 69Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1125536671053019472010-01-23T18:02:00.000-08:002010-01-25T15:55:02.278-08:00Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. . . . The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it.<br /><br /><em>The Passionate State of Mind</em>, aph. 41 (1955)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1125679804601205962010-01-23T09:48:00.000-08:002010-01-25T15:54:39.861-08:00An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.<br /><br /><em>Reflections on the Human Condition</em>, aph. 88 (1973)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1128531021466444382010-01-23T09:47:00.000-08:002010-01-25T15:52:06.797-08:00Nonconformists 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.<br /><br /><em>Reflections on the Human Condition</em>, aph. 50 (1973)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1126196435379988252010-01-23T09:04:00.000-08:002010-01-25T15:53:41.512-08:00To 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.<br /><br /><em>The Passionate State of Mind</em>, aph. 59 (1955)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1125931303452417782010-01-23T07:39:00.000-08:002010-01-25T15:54:15.170-08:00The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.<br /><br /><em>Reflections on the Human Condition</em>, aph. 64 (1973)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1146551390022391022006-05-01T23:26:00.000-07:002006-05-01T23:33:47.136-07:00Ours 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. <br /><br /><em>In Our Time</em> (1976), “The Trend Toward Anarchy,” p. 52Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1144732676909404542006-04-10T22:16:00.000-07:002006-04-10T22:17:56.953-07:00The 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. <br /><br /><em>In Our Time</em> (1976), "Money," p. 37Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1144077860542999132006-04-03T08:21:00.000-07:002006-04-03T08:51:36.326-07:00The 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.<br /><br /><em>The Temper of Our Time</em> (1967) p. 70Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1142644943782203742006-03-17T17:19:00.000-08:002006-03-17T17:22:23.796-08:00One would like to see mankind spend the balance of the century in a total effort to clean up and groom the surface of the globe – wipe out the jungles, turn deserts and swamps into arable land, terrace barren mountains, regulate rivers, eradicate all pests, control the weather, and make the whole land mass a fit habitation for Man. The globe should be our and not nature’s home, and we no longer nature’s guests. <br /><br /><em>The Temper of Our Time</em> (1967) p. 94Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16109473.post-1141106532031819382006-02-27T21:56:00.000-08:002006-02-27T22:02:12.140-08:00Free 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.<br /><br /><em>The Temper of Our Time</em> (1967) p. 103Unknownnoreply@blogger.com