Eric Hoffer Quotes

إن اعتقادنا أن لدينا واجبًا مقدسًا إزاء الآخرين كثيرًا ما يكون طوق النجاة الذي نحاول بواسطته إنقاذ أنفسنا من الغرق، وعندما نمدّ يدنا نحو الآخر فنحن في حقيقة الأمر نبحث عن يد تنتشلنا.

Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed:
1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer;
2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.

There is even in the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind in the exercise of self-sacrifice. Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.

لن نشعر أن لدينا شيئًا نستحق العيش من أجله مادمنا لم نكن مستعدين للموت في سبيله

The intellectual cannot operate at room temperature.

though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious.

A feeling of superiority counteracts imitation. Had the millions of immigrants who came to this country been superior people — the cream of the countries they came from — there would have been not one U.S.A. but a mosaic of lingual and cultural groups. It was due to the fact that the majority of the immigrants were of the lowest and the poorest, the despised and the rejected, that the heterogeneous millions blended so rapidly and thoroughly. They came here with the ardent desire to shed their old world identity and be reborn to a new life; and they were automatically equipped with an unbounded capacity to imitate and adopt the new. The strangeness of the new country attracted rather than repelled them. They craved a new identity and a new life — and the stranger the new world the more it suited their inclination.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business. This minding of other people’s business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat. 11

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.

I can do no better than quote Montaigne: “All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.

العاطلون ينزعون إلى اتباع الذين يبيعونهم الأمل قبل اتباع الذين يقدمون لهم العون.

من أين تأتي هذه الكراهية الغير منطقية و لماذا تتحول إلي عامل توحيد؟ إنها تعبير عن محاولة يائسة من جانبنا لإخفاء شعورنا بالنقص, أو بقلة أهميتنا, أو بالذنب, أو بأي عيوب أخري تنبع من داخلنا, يتحول احتقار النفس هنا لكراهية الآخرين, مع محاولة مستميتة لإخفاء هذا التحول.
حتي عندما يكون هناك ظلم, فإن كراهيتنا لا تنبع منه بقدر ما تنبع من إحساسنا بالفشل و العجز و الجبن, بعبارة أخري من احتقارنا انفسنا. عندما نشعر بالتفوق علي أعدائنا فإننا نعاملهم باحتقار و ربما بشئ من الشفقة لكننا لا نكرههم.
تتضح لنا الحقيقة التي تقول : إن الكراهية تنبع من احتقار النفس أكثر مما تنبع من الظلم عندما نتفحص العلاقة الحميمة بين الكراهية و تأنيب الضمير.

إننا عندما نهرب من أنفسنا نلقي بثقلنا على عاتق جارنا، أو نطبق على عنقه.

إن إحباطنا عندما نملك الكثير, ونريد المزيد يفوق إحباطنا عندما لا نملك شيئًا ونريد القليل. ونحن أقل تذمرًا حين نفقد أشياء كثيرة منا, حين لا نفقد إلا شيئًا واحدًا.

It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, 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. 41