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Society Quotes

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Society 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

“The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.”

People Society Movement Offers Mass Aim Technique Cures True Believer Malady

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

“The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.”

Self Individual Existence Society Offers Advantage Ideals West Population Frustration Substitutes Plague Advancement Soothing Anonymity

Book:THE TRUE BELIEVER

Source: THE TRUE BELIEVER

“It is an unfinished society that we offer the world-a society that is forever committed to change, to improvement and to growth, that will never stagnate in the certitude of ideology or the finalities of dogma.”

World Growth Forever Society Offers Committed Improvement Ideology Dogma Unfinished Finality Certitude

Book:We Must Meet Our Duty and Convince the World that We are Just Friends and Brave Enemies

Source: We Must Meet Our Duty and Convince the World that We are Just Friends and Brave Enemies

“Society is a long series of uprising ridges, which from the first to the last offer no valley of repose. Whenever you take your stand, you are looked down upon by those above you, and reviled and pelted by those below you. Every creature you see is a farthing Sisyphus, pushing his little stone up some Liliputian mole-hill. This is our world.”

World Firsts Littles Long Lasts Society Offers Creatures Stones Series Hills Pushing Our World Valleys Repose Uprising Moles Ridges Sisyphus

Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

“But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?”

Wells Social Justice Freedom Liberty Society Offers Let Me Social Justice Definitions Libertarian Disagree Economic Freedom Economic Justice

Author:Walter E. Williams

“What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.”

Ifs Would Be Able Individual Liberty Society Offers Free Society Individual Liberty

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“The chief difference [between totalitarian and free countries] is that only the totalitarians appear clearly to know how they want to achieve that result, while the free world has only its past achievements to show, being by its very nature unable to offer any detailed "plan" for further growth.”

Knows World Want Country Shows Past Growth Differences Results Know How Plans Society Achieve Offers Achievement Chiefs Free World Free Country

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“Let me offer you, metaphorically, two magic wands that have sweeping powers to change society. With one wand you could wipe out all racism and discrimination from the hearts and minds of white America. The other wand you could wave across the ghettoes and barrios of America and infuse the inhabitants with Japanese or Jewish values, respect for learning, and ambition. ... I suggest that the best wand for society and for those who live in the ghettoes and barrios would be the second wand.”