Frasi di Eric Hoffer

pagina 5

“Puoi scoprire ciò che più teme il tuo nemico osservando i mezzi di cui si serve per spaventarti.”

“La coscienza di un'anima è proporzionata al numero di verità che può sopportare.”

“Non c'è solitudine più grande della solitudine di un fallito. Il fallito è un estraneo nella sua stessa casa.”

“Per conoscere la religione di una persona non dobbiamo ascoltare la fede che dice di professare, ma dobbiamo trovare il suo tipo di intolleranza.”

“La cosa notevole è che noi davvero amiamo il nostro prossimo come noi stessi: noi facciamo agli altri quello che vorremmo fosse fatto a noi stessi. Noi odiamo gli altri quando odiamo noi stessi. Noi siamo tolleranti verso gli altri quando tolleriamo noi stessi. Noi perdoniamo gli altri quando noi perdoniamo noi stessi. Noi siamo proni a sacrificare gli altri quando siamo pronti a sacrificare noi stessi.”

“Noi non ci sentiamo veramente grati nei confronti di quelle persone che fanno realizzare i nostri sogni; esse rovinano i nostri sogni.”

“Quando le persone sono libere di fare a modo loro, in genere si mettono ad imitarsi a vicenda.”

“La maleducazione è un'imitazione di forza dell'uomo debole.”

“A volte sentiamo la perdita di un pregiudizio come perdita di vigore.”

“Anche l'imprevedibilità può diventare monotona.”

“Aver subito un'ingiustizia è avere uno scopo nella vita.”

“Gli uomini si stancano tanto perché non fanno le cose che vogliono fare quanto perché fanno le cose che non vogliono fare.”

“I fatti sono controrivoluzionari.”

“L'individuo che deve giustificare la propria esistenza attraverso i propri sforzi è eternamente schiavo di se stesso.”

“L'inizio del pensiero è il disaccordo – non solo con gli altri ma anche con noi stessi.”

“La fede assoluta corrompe in modo altrettanto assoluto quanto il potere assoluto.”

“La giovinezza in se stessa è un talento non duraturo.”

“La dissipazione è una forma di autosacrificio.”

“Quando ci sono le capacità tecniche necessarie a smuovere le montagne, non c'è bisogno della fede che smuove le montagne.”

“Quando crediamo di possedere l'unica verità, è probabile che siamo indifferenti alle normali verità quotidiane.”

“Quando si automatizza un'industria la si rende più moderna; ma quando si tenta di farlo con la vita, la si rende primitiva.”

“Siamo più predisposti a generalizzare il cattivo del buono. Sostenendo che il cattivo è più potente e contagioso.”

“Siamo soliti pensare che una rivoluzione sia causa di profondi cambiamenti. In realtà accade proprio il contrario: il cambiamento prepara gli animi alla rivoluzione.”

“Un castigo spesso implica che facciamo a noi stessi quello che abbiamo fatto ad altri.”

“Un uomo in grado di trasformare gli ostacoli in opportunità dimostra di possedere una profonda umanità.”

“Mi aggrappo ai miei pregiudizi, sono i testicoli della mia mente.”

“Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”

“What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.”

“people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.”

“Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.”

“We feel free when we escape, even if it be from the frying pan into the fire.”

“There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.”

“Flaubert and Nietzsche have emphasized the importance of standing up and walking in the process of thinking. The peripatetics were perhaps motivated by the same awareness. Yet purposeful walking — what we call marching — is an enemy of thought and is used as a powerful instrument for the suppression of independent thought and the inculcation of unquestioned obedience.”

“As a full-time longshoreman I am necessarily more a scribbler than a writer. But I am also so by inclination. The writing I can enjoy is the sketching of an idea in a few dozen words — two hundred at most. Elaboration and expansion are for me hard going. An article of several thousand words becomes inevitably a mosaic of ideas — a series of ideas stuck together.”

“The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance — of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.”

“To believe that if we could have but this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.”

“To think for oneself is not only, as Gide said, counterrevolutionary but also apostasy and, at certain times, treason.”

“Social stability is the product of an equilibrium between a vigorous majority and violent minorities. Disorder does not come from an increased inner pressure or from the interaction of explosive ingredients. There is no reason to believe that the nature of the violent minorities is now greatly different from what it was in the past. What has changed is the will and ability of the majority to react.
It is hard to tell what causes the pervasive timidity. One thinks of video-induced stupor, intake of tranquilizers, fear of not living to enjoy the many new possessions and toys, the example of our betters in cities and on campuses who high-mindedly surrender to threats of violence and make cowardice fashionable.”

“It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves — not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.”

“The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”

“Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.”

“The awareness of their individual blemishes and shortcomings inclines the frustrated to detect ill will and meanness in their fellow men. Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.”

“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”

“Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.”

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

“If in order to keep the wheels turning you have to deafen ears with propaganda, crack the whip of Terror, and keep pushing people around, then you haven't got a machine civilization no matter how numerous and ingenious your machines.”

“The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.”

“I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.”

“The capacity to resist coercion stems partly from the individual's identification with a group.”

“The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless.”

“It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.”

“To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.”

“The fear of becoming a "has been" keeps some people from becoming anything.”

“It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.”

“The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.”