Eric Hoffer

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives read more

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which read more

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the read more

Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.

Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable; when conditions have so improved that an ideal state seems read more

Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable; when conditions have so improved that an ideal state seems almost within reach. A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed. De Tocqueville in his researches into the state of society in France before the revolution was struck by the discovery that "in no one of the periods which have followed the Revolution of 1789 has the national prosperity of France augmented more rapidly than it did in the twenty years preceding that event." He is forced to conclude that "the French found their position the more intolerable the better it became.

The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a read more

The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.