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Difficulty Quotes

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Difficulty Quotes

“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaningless of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring upon them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.”

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

“[T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State.”

Source: the Revolt of the Masses

“Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.”

Men Needs Littles Reason Whole Political Individual Interest Media Particular Mass Difficulty Satisfaction Selling Appeals Aspiration Sensible Embodiment Mass Media

Author:Herbert Marcuse

“In general, I feel, or I have come to feel, that the richest writing comes not from the people who dedicate themselves to writing alone. I know this is contradicted again and again but I continue to feel it. They don't, of course, write as much, or as fast, but I think it is riper and more satisfying when it does come. One of the difficulties of writing or doing any kind of creative work in America seems to me to be that we put such stress on production and material results. We put a time pressure and a mass pressure on creative work which are meaningless and infantile in that field.”

“How dominating is appetite, how enveloping immediate experience! Even the philosophically minded among us capitulate, ultimately, to the narrowest sense of personal need. Political time moves at a snail's pace because it is only with nearly insurmountable difficulty that moral discomfort takes root in the best of people, forcing an imperative out of a complaint; so viscerally repugnant is it for a critical mass to find the prevailing system unbearable, much less prepare to take up arms against it.”

“Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value; and the precious particles are generally combined with the baser in such a manner that the separation is a task of the utmost difficulty.”

Whole Facts Lying Values History Mass Tasks Gold Difficulty Mere Separation Abstract Particles Latent Dross

Author:Thomas B. Macaulay

“One whose troops repeatedly congregate in small groups here and there, whispering together, has lost the masses. One who frequently grants rewards is in deep distress. One who frequently imposes punishments is in great difficulty. One who is at first excessively brutal and then fears the masses is the pinnacle of stupidity.”

Firsts Together Lost Groups Mass Difficulty Rewards Stupidity Punishment Grants Troops Brutal Distress Here And There Whispering Small Groups Pinnacle

Author:Sun Tzu

“The clearer and deeper the public opinion of the world, in the first instance the opinion of the working masses, will understand the contradictions and the difficulties of the socialist development of an isolated country, the higher will it appreciate the results achieved. The less it identifies the fundamental methods of Socialism with the zigzags and errors of the Soviet bureaucracy, the less will be the danger that, by the inevitable revelation of these errors and of their consequences, the authority, not only of the present ruling group, but of the workers' State itself, may decline.”

“One of the greatest difficulties the left faces in reaching out to masses of people in America is its profound disrespect of spirituality and religious life…people on the left need to acknowledge – we need to grapple with – the question of religion.”

People Needs America Faces Spirituality Left Religious Mass Difficulty Profound Acknowledge Reaching Reach Out Disrespect Religious Life

Author:Bell Hooks

“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.”

People Lying Easy Mistake Victory Mass Claims Difficulty Mask

Author:Amilcar Cabral

“We have an army for fighting as well as an army for labour. For fighting, we have the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies but even they do a dual job, warfare and production. With these two kinds of armies, and with a fighting army skilled in these two tasks and in mass work, we can overcome our difficulties and defeat Japanese imperialism.”

Wells Kind Two Jobs Fighting Mass Tasks Overcoming Difficulty Army Defeat Productions Labour Fourth Warfare Routes Imperialism

Book:Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works

Source: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works

“I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”

Thinking Men Real Facts Problem Difficult Situation Clear Impossible Streets He Man Mass Difficulty Presses Distance Radio Enormous Complexity Significance Problem Solving

Author:George C. Marshall

“We must practice revolutionary democracy in every aspect of our Party life. Every responsible member must have the courage of his responsibilities, exacting from others a proper respect for his work and properly respecting the work of others. Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.”

People Lying Easy Party Mistake Responsibility Practice Democracy Victory Members Mass Aspect Claims Difficulty Responsible Revolutionary Mask

Author:Amilcar Cabral