Eric Hoffer: from Reflections on the Human Condition

Something to irritate almost everybody .  .   .


"#33  It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn."

"#40  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  There is a spoiled-brat quality about the self-consciously alienated.  Life must have a meaning, history must have a goal, and everything must be in apple-pie order if they are to cease being alienated.  Actually there is no alienation that a little power will not cure."

"42  The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant.  Fin an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self."


"43  We all have private ails.  The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails."

"44  Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation."


-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition