“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.” DoeMadeSelfWholeIndividualExistenceSocietyMovementPromiseOffersAnxietyMassAbuseDifficultyAbsolutesFollowingDoctrineCuresMiserableCorporateRisingMeaninglessFrustratedRefugeAbsorbingAbsolute TruthTrue Believer Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“People are frightened of death, and the central lie of all religion is that there’s a cure for this and an exception we’ve made in your own case: an eternal life offered if you make the right propitiations and the right abjections. Well, I’m sorry. I think that it's the height of immorality to lie to people like that. That’s why [religion] survives.” PeopleIfsThinkingWellsMadeLyingCasesEternalSorryCuresHeightExceptionFrightenedI'm SorryEternal LifeImmoralityAbjectionPropitiation Author:Christopher Hitchens
“Above the care of Nature and of State, Suspended in the noon of Night we wait, All slumber nursing, to make sweet and pure, While secret Nature, weaving works the cure. We are the handmaids of the hollow night, The angels of the dark, restoring sight; We go -- the pains of Day to soothe, console -- Awake, arise! Behold thou art made whole.” ArtMadeStatesWholeCarePainNightWaitingDarkSecretSweetPureAngelSightAriseCuresAwakeHollowNursingNoonConsoleSuspendedSlumberRestoringWeavingHandmaids Author:Bram Stoker