Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil. - Eric Hoffer
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Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.
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About
Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer (25 July 1902 – 21 May 1983) was an American writer on social and political philosophy. His first book, The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements (1951) is widely recognized as a classic on mass-movements and the psychological roots of fanaticism. Despite rising to fame with the success and popularity of his writings, he continued to work as a longshoreman until retiring at age 65.
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Wikimedia Commons, White House of the President of the United States; uploaded to YouTube by TheLBJLibrary (Public domain / CC0)
Portrait from Wikimedia Commons. Credit: White House of the President of the United States; uploaded to YouTube by TheLBJLibrary. Used under Public domain / CC0. Processed and styled by Quotewise.
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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. There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience; a readiness to attempt the impossible; a bias for simple solutions — to cut the knot rather than unravel it; the viewing of compromise as surrender; the tendency to manipulate people and "experiment with blood." Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man’s reason and the boundless range of his intelligence.
