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Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer

Book by Eric Hoffer · 39 quotes · Men, Self, Humans

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Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer Quotes

“In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes- courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.”

MenSoulEvilCompassionIgnoranceDutyHonorNobleLoyaltyImpulseGood And EvilAttributesTrafficAlchemyPoisonousProceedingRuthlessnessHope Love
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“Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom."”

IfsMenSelfYoungIndividualResponsibilityHistoryTalentMovementMassBurdenNaziNazismArdentNazi GermanyFreedom To ChooseIndividual Responsibility
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“It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites-opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity-where energies flow smoothly in one direction-there will be much doing but no music.”

SoulEnergyMusicTasteFlowOppositesLoyaltyYearningOne DirectionPolarityEnergy Flow
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“There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”

FaithSimplePowerCuttingImpossibleDemandAbsolutesInstrumentsSurrenderCompromiseObedienceBiasSimilarityReadinessKnotsAbsolute PowerPower CorruptsDehumanization
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“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”

EndsPainPastSpeakForgetResultsCourageDoubtAchievementDifficultyCleanTrackPainfulDeclineDecayOur PastThrustDiscouragementEnd ResultsForget The Past
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“A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.”

IfsEnoughMightStrongDealsMistakeWeaknessStriveGood WillUndertakingsResolute
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“However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.”

LifeBelieveHumansEyeLawIndividualBeliefSeeingDifficultyBottomAffairSeedsConvincedInevitableGoverningInevitabilityInexorableFortuitous
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“The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.”

TurnsAchievementEmptyCrisisSurpriseDisappointmentDetailsCertaintyRememberedRemarkableAutobiographyCrowdedLandmarksEmpty Life
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“Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.”

ChildrenDoeIdeasSuccessIndividualGrowsCreativityCreativeGrowing UpGrowingInnovationRevolutionaryPerpetual
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“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.”

PeopleShouldHumansChildrenWisdomTogetherParentKnowledgeStudentsProduceTasksGrandparentFacilityHuman SocietyChildren And ParentsImplants
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“The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.”

WayHumansRealizingCreativeTalentMissingMembersCapacitySpeciesPositive AtheismGiftedConstraintsCultivatingHuman Species
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“Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?”

SelfHumanityNationsPartyRaceDestinyAcceptanceEternalPosterityVisualizationFaith In Humanity
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“Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.”

MindFactsMovementMassResponseStartingTechniqueBelieverConversionCharacteristicsFrustrationPeculiarFrustratedIndigenousAccordTrue BelieverStarting OutFixationProselytizing
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“The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind -- the mind of a fighter -- in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man's first beginning.”

MenMindFirstsSimpleVirtueFashionBirthDegreesCrisisCastsFighterMasteryNew BeginningsNoveltyCrudeParamountCredulityCohesionInfantileFierceness
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“There is nothing more explosive than a skilled population condemned to inaction. Such a population is likely to become a hotbed of extremism and intolerance, and be receptive to any proselytizing ideology, however absurd and vicious, which promises vast action.”

ActionPromisePopulationAbsurdIdeologyIntoleranceViciousExtremismInactionExplosivesReceptiveProselytizing
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“To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.”

MenGivingHumansWholePastAffairPatternsMakersPreciseEquationsPredictableEliminating
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“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.”

PeopleMenWantHumansMeanMatterTurnsForcePowerHe ManCircumstancesTestsAbsolutesManifestationUniquenessClayPassivityAbsolute PowerPredictability
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