A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
— Eric Hoffer
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
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.
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
To the old, the new is usually bad news.
The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
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 only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.
A man by himself is in bad company.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
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.
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.
Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
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.
Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
