Athens, Greece - 2007 1. “Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”
2. “Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.”
3. “Add a few drops of malice to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.”
4. “A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.”
5. “All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.”
6. “All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium.”
7. “All prayers and hopes are a reaching-out for coincidences.”
8. “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business. This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.”
9. “A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.”
10. “An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to an empty head.”
11. “Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.”
12. “A notebook I carry around with me wherever I go. When it is full, I review it. Any quotation or thought worth preserving is copied out.”
13. “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.”
14. “A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.”
15. “A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.”
16. “Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.”
17. “Conservatism is sometimes a symptom of sterility. Those who have nothing in them that can grow and develop must cling to what they have in beliefs, ideas and possessions. The sterile radical, too, is basically conservative. He is afraid to let go of the ideas and beliefs he picked up in his youth lest his life be seen as empty and wasted.”
18. “Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.”
19. “Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.”
20. “Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.”
21. “Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.”
22. “Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.”
23. “Faith, enthusiasm, and passionate intensity in general are substitutes for the self-confidence born of experience and the possession of skill. Where there is the necessary skill to move mountains there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.”
24. “Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person's nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.”
25. “Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or our worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter worthlessness can be a source of courage.”
26. “Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.”
27. “However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.”
28. “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
29. “In man's life, the absence of an essential component usually leads to the adoption of a substitute. The substitute is usually embraced with vehemence and extremism, for we have to convince ourselves that what we took as second choice is the best there ever was. Thus blind faith is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves; insatiable desire a substitute for hope; accumulation a substitute for growth; fervent hustling a substitute for purposeful action; and pride a substitute for an unattainable self-respect.”
30. “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
31. “In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.”
32. “...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.”
33. “It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.”
34. “It is easier to love humanity than to love your neighbor.”
35. “It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.”
36. “It is not at all simple to understand the simple.”
37. “It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.”
38. “It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.”
39. “It is not sheer malice that pricks our ears to evil reports about our fellow men. For there are frequent moments when we feel lower than the lowest of mankind, and this opinion of ourselves isolates us. Hence the rumor that all flesh is base comes almost as a message of hope. It breaks down the wall that has kept us apart, and we feel one with humanity.”
40. “It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.”
41. “It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense which cramps and restrains our nature.”
42. ”It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.”
43. “It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.”
44. “It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.”
45. “It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.”
46. "It is the unique glory of the human species that its rejected do not fall by the wayside but become the building stones of the new, and that those who cannot fit into the present should become the shapers of the future."
47. “Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.”
48. ”Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.”
49. “Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.”
50. “Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.”
51. “Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man. It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.”
52. “Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.”
53. “No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.”
54. “Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.”
55. “One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.”
56. “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 result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
57. "Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny."
58. "Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there."
59. “Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.”
60. “Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.”
61. “Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.”
62. “People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”
63. “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”
64. “Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.”
65. “Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.”
66. “Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.”
67. “The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.”
68. “The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.”
69. “The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.”
70. ”The beginning of thought is in disagreement -- not only with others but also with ourselves.”
71. “The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.”
72. “The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves.”
73. “The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.”
74. “The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.”
75. “The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.”
76. “...the differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change.”
77. “The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.”
78. “The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor made it easy for him to acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness. For he derives his sense of usefulness mainly from directing, instructing, and planning- from minding other people's business- and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.”
79. “The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.”
80. “The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world.”
81. “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.”
82. “The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.”
83. “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”
84. “The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.”
85. “The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.”
86. “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.”
87. “The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.”
88. “The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.”
89. “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.”
90. ”The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.”
91. ”The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.”
92. "The practice of terror serves the true believer not only to cow and crush his opponents but also to invigorate and intensify his own faith."
93. ”The readiness to praise others indicates a desire for excellence and perhaps an ability to realize it.”
94. “The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.”
95. ”The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.”
96. “There are many who find the burdens, the anxiety, and the isolation of an individual existence unbearable. His is particularly true when the opportunities for self-advancement are relatively meager, and one's individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for. Such persons sooner or later turn their backs on an individual existence and strive to acquire a sense of worth and a purpose by an identification with a holy cause, a leader, or a movement. The faith and pride they derive from such an identification serve them as substitutes for the unattainable self-confidence and self-respect.”
97. “There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture, and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.”
98. “There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.”
99. ”There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.”
100. ”There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.”
101. “There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the passionate state of mind...”
102. “There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.”
103. “There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it.”
104. “There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They asked to be deceived.”
105. “There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to preserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on.”
106. “There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse. The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.”
107. "There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house."
108. “The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbors as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant of others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.”
109. “The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.”
110. “The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.”
111. “The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.”
112. “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
113. ”The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.”
114. “The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.”
115. “The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.”
116. “The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients.”
117. “The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.”
118. “The well-adjusted make poor prophets.”
119. “The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.”
120. “Those of little faith are of little hatred.”
121. “Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.”
122. “Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.”
123. “Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They become responsive to grandiose schemes, and will display unequaled steadfastness, formidable energies and a special fitness in the performance of tasks which would stump superior people. It seems paradoxical that defeat in dealing with the possible should embolden people to attempt the impossible, but a familiarity with the mentality of the weak reveals that what seems a path of daring is actually an easy way out: It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings. For when we fail in attaining the impossible we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.”
124. “To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.”
125. ”To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.”
126. “To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.”
127. “To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.”
128. “To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance.”
129. “To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness. He must cease to be George, Hans, Ivan or Tadao- a human atom with an existence bounded by birth and death. The most drastic way to achieve this end is by complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body. The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings. When asked who he is, his automatic response is that he is a German, a Russian, a Japanese, a Christian, a Moslem, a member of a certain tribe or family. He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives he cannot really die.”
130. “To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.”
131. “Unity and self-sacrifice, of themselves, even when fostered by the most noble means, produce a facility for hating. Even when men league themselves mightily together to promote tolerance and peace on earth, they are likely to be violently intolerant toward those not of a like mind.”
132. “We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.”
133. “We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.”
134. “We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs inordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.”
135. “We cannot hate those who we despise.”
136. “We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate.”
137. “We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.”
138. “We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.”
139. “We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.”
140. “We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and beget action; they kill and revive, corrupt and cure. The "men-of-words"- priests, prophets, intellectuals- have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen.”
141. “We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.”
142. “One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages, and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.”
143. “We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us.”
144. “We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.”
145. “We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.”
146. “What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.”
147. “What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes than in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored.”
148. “When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.”
149. “When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.”
150. “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness. On the other hand, where communal discipline is strict but not ruthless...originality is likely to thrive.”
151. “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.”
152. “When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.”
153. “When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable "animated instrument" which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.”
154. “When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.”
155. “When we leave people on their own, we are delivering them into the hands of a ruthless taskmaster from whose bondage there is no escape. The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”
156. “Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.”
157. “Where things have not changed at all, there is the least likelihood of revolution.”
158. “Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.”
159. “Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.”
160. “With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.”
161. “Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.”
162. “Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency.”
163. “You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.”
164. “You
