Society Quotes - Page 39

• The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.

  Eric Hoffer

  Holiness, Causes, Principles

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency.

  Eric Hoffer

  Agency, Soul, Devil

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored.

  Eric Hoffer

  Attitude, Taken, Home

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• 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.

  Eric Hoffer

  Running, Fall, Men

  Eric Hoffer (2011). “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.

  Eric Hoffer

  Desire, World, Finals

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• The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients.

  Eric Hoffer

  Believe, People, Mind

  "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements". Book by Eric Hoffer, 1951.

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• We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.

  Eric Hoffer

  Running

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.

  Eric Hoffer

  Loyalty, Dedication, Self

  Eric Hoffer (1951). “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”, New York : Harper

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• If it weren't for marriage, men and women would have to fight with total strangers.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Marriage, Humor

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• The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of explaining life.

  Richard Dawkins

  Principles, Theory, Explaining

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.272, W. W. Norton & Company

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• the self-assertive tendency is the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness, the integrative tendency, the dynamic expression of its partness.

  Arthur Koestler

  Self, Expression, Tendencies

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• man has an irrepressible tendency to read meaning into the buzzing confusion of sights and sounds impinging on his senses; and where no agreed meaning can be found, he will provide it out of his own imagination.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Sight, Imagination

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• The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer.

  Arthur Koestler

  Groups, Killers, Individual

  Arthur Koestler (1981). “Kaleidoscope: essays from Drinkers of infinity, and The heel of Achilles and later pieces and stories”, Vintage

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• Modern man lives isolated in his artificial environment, not because the artificial is evil as such, but because of his lack of comprehension of the forces which make it work- of the principles which relate his gadgets to the forces of nature, to the universal order. It is not central heating which makes his existence 'unnatural,' but his refusal to take an interest in the principles behind it. By being entirely dependent on science, yet closing his mind to it, he leads the life of an urban barbarian.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Order, Evil

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

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• The more backwoodish a social group, juvenile or adult, the stricter its conception of the normal, and the readier it will ridicule any departure from it.

  Arthur Koestler

  Adults, Groups, Departure

  Arthur Koestler (1964). “The Act of Creation”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.

  Arthur Koestler

  War, Taken, Eggs

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• in the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.

  Arthur Koestler

  Pertinent Questions, Lasts, Dizzy

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• The 'missing link' between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Missing, Links

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• The integrative tendencies of the individual operate through the mechanisms of empathy, sympathy, projection, introjection, identification, worship- all of which make him feel that he is a part of some larger entity which transcends the boundaries of the individual self. This psychological urge to belong, to participate, to commune is as primary and real as its opposite. The all-important question is the nature of that higher entity of which the individual feels himself a part.

  Arthur Koestler

  Real, Self, Opposites

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• When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato's world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion.

  Arthur Koestler

  Plato, Real, Ideas

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• Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability- except the order of a dead universe filled with a uniformly distributed gas.

  Arthur Koestler

  Simple, Order, Reason

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• one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.

  Arthur Koestler

  Self, Tests, Theory

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• The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being.

  George William Curtis

  Dark, Light, Civilization

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• There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.

  John Milton

  Truth, Tolerance, Religion

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• Never soar aloft on an enemy's pinions.

  Aesop

  Enemy, Soar

  Aesop (2015). “Aesop's Fables”, p.48, Pelekanos Books

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