Eric Hoffer Quotes

The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it.Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese — and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.

There is perhaps some hope to be derived from the fact that in most instances where an attempt to realize an ideal society gave birth to the ugliness and violence of a prolonged active mass movement the experiment was made on a vast scale and with a heterogeneous population. Such was the case in the rise of Christianity and Islam, and in the French, Russian and Nazi revolutions. The promising communal settlements in the small state of Israel and the successful programs of socialization in the small Scandinavian states indicate perhaps that when the attempt to realize an ideal society is undertaken by a small nation with a more or less homogeneous population it can proceed and succeed in an atmosphere which is neither hectic nor coercive.

One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors that promote self-sacrifice is that we are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have “something worth fighting for,” they do not feel like fighting. People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause.

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. 29

إن قبو التعذيب مؤسسة جماعية/اجتماعية

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

ينزع الرجل إلى الاهتمام بشؤونه الخاصة عندما تكون جديرة بالاهتمام. أما عندما لا تكون لديه شؤون خاصة حقيقية, فإنه ينزع إلى نسيان شؤونه التي فقدت معناها والاهتمام بشؤون الآخرين الخاصة. يعبر هذا الاهتمام عن نفسه بالغيبة والتجسس والفضول, كما أنه يتجه إلى اهتمام غير طبيعي بالشؤون المجتمعية والقومية والعرقية. إننا عندما نهرب من أنفسنا نلقي بثقلنا على عاتق جارنا, أو نطبق على عنقه.

Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing. 104

Our preoccupation with other people - whether we aid or hinder them, love or hate them - is at bottom a means of getting away from ourselves. It is strange to contemplate that competition with others - the breathless race to get ahead of others - is basically a running away from ourselves

Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them. 142

The decline of handicrafts in modern times is perhaps one of the causes for the rise of frustration

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

Misery does not automatically generate discontent, nor is the intensity of discontent directly proportionate to the degree of misery. [...] A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed. […] 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.