# The True Believer  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Eric Hoffer]] - Full Title:: The True Believer - Category: #books ## Highlights > It does not maintain that all movements are identical, but that they share certain essential characteristics which give them a family likeness. ([Location 61](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=61)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance. ([Location 62](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=62)) > However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing. ([Location 72](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=72)) > For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. ([Location 85](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=85)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. ([Location 86](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=86)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > I can do no better than quote Montaigne: “All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.” ([Location 93](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=93)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### The Desire for Change > It is a truism that many who join a rising revolutionary movement are attracted by the prospect of sudden and spectacular change in their conditions of life. ([Location 98](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=98)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Where self-advancement cannot, or is not allowed to, serve as a driving force, other sources of enthusiasm have to be found if momentous changes, such as the awakening and renovation of a stagnant society or radical reforms in the character and pattern of life of a community, are to be realized and perpetuated. ([Location 103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=103)) > Islam when it emerged was an organizing and modernizing medium. ([Location 108](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=108)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Christianity was a civilizing and modernizing influence among the savage tribes of Europe. ([Location 109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=109)) > The Crusades and the Reformation both were crucial factors in shaking the Western world from the stagnation of the Middle Ages. ([Location 109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=109)) > The Bolshevik revolution may figure in history as much an attempt to modernize a sixth of the world’s surface as an attempt to build a Communist economy. ([Location 116](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=116)) > “religiofication"—the art of turning practical purposes into holy causes. ([Location 134](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=134)) > 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 a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. ([Location 141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=141)) > “If anything ail a man,” says Thoreau, “so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming—the world.”3 ([Location 145](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=145)) > The self-confidence of even the consistently successful is never absolute. They are never sure that they know all the ingredients which go into the making of their success. The outside world seems to them a precariously balanced mechanism, and so long as it ticks in their favor they are afraid to tinker with it. Thus the resistance to change and the ardent desire for it spring from the same conviction, and the one can be as vehement as the other. ([Location 150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=150)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > We counteract a deep feeling of insecurity by making of our existence a fixed routine. We hereby acquire the illusion that we have tamed the unpredictable. ([Location 157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=157)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > There is thus a conservatism of the destitute as profound as the conservatism of the privileged, ([Location 160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=160)) > Never, says de Tocqueville, had humanity been prouder of itself nor had it ever so much faith in its own omnipotence. ([Location 164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=164)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo. ([Location 175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=175)) > Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope. ([Location 180](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=180)) > If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent ([Location 183](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=183)) > or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope. ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=184)) > When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. ([Location 203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=203)) > For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap. ([Location 206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=206)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### The Desire for Substitutes > The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest. ([Location 215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=215)) > particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. ([Location 216](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=216)) > People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement. ([Location 218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=218)) > They look on self-interest as on something tainted and evil; something unclean and unlucky. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=220)) > Nothing that has its roots and reasons in the self can be good and noble. ([Location 221](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=221)) > If they join the movement as full converts they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body, or if attracted as sympathizers they find elements of pride, confidence and purpose by identifying themselves with the efforts, achievements and prospects of the movement. ([Location 223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=223)) > When a mass movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed its vigorous stage; that it is no longer engaged in molding a new world but in possessing and preserving the present. It ceases then to be a movement and becomes an enterprise. ([Location 231](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=231)) > Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves. ([Location 238](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=238)) > The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause. ([Location 240](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=240)) > 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. ([Location 242](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=242)) > In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat. ([Location 244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=244)) > Hermann Rauschning says of pre-Hitlerian Germany that “The feeling of having come to the end of all things was one of the worst troubles we endured after that lost war.” ([Location 252](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=252)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > ahead. The unemployed are more likely to follow the peddlers of hope than the handers-out of relief. ([Location 255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=255)) > We can have qualified confidence in ourselves, but the faith we have in our nation, religion, race or holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising. ([Location 262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=262)) > We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it. ([Location 264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=264)) #### The Interchangeability of Mass Movements > In pre-Hitlerian Germany it was often a toss up whether a restless youth would join the Communists or the Nazis. ([Location 268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=268)) > Where mass movements are in violent competition with each other, there are not infrequent instances of converts—even the most zealous—shifting their allegiance from one to the other. ([Location 274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=274)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > (a) all mass movements are competitive, ([Location 282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=282)) > (b) all mass movements are interchangeable. ([Location 283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=283)) > The exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt was a slave revolt, a religious movement and a nationalist movement. ([Location 287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=287)) > The Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions are also full-blown nationalist movements. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=299)) > The problem of stopping a mass movement is often a matter of substituting one movement for another. ([Location 302](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=302)) > For it always fares ill with the present when a genuine mass movement is on the march. ([Location 308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=308)) > In pre-war Italy and Germany practical businessmen acted in an entirely “logical” manner when they encouraged a Fascist and a Nazi movement in order to stop communism. ([Location 309](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=309)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Thus migration can serve as a substitute for a mass movement. ([Location 316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=316)) > In this country, free and easy migration over a vast continent contributed to our social stability. ([Location 318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=318)) > Every mass movement is in a sense a migration—a movement toward a promised land; ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=324)) #### The Potential Converts #### The Role of the Undesirables in Human Affairs > The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. ([Location 337](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=337)) > It was not the irony of history that the undesired in the countries of Europe should have crossed an ocean to build a new world on this continent. Only they could do it. ([Location 345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=345)) > Though the disaffected are found in all walks of life, they are most frequent in the following categories: (a) the poor, (b) misfits, (c) outcasts, (d) minorities, (e) adolescent youth, (f) the ambitious (whether facing insurmountable obstacles or unlimited opportunities), (g) those in the grip of some vice or obsession, (h) the impotent (in body or mind), (i) the inordinately selfish, (j) the bored, (k) the sinners. ([Location 347](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=347)) #### The Poor ##### The New Poor > It is usually those whose poverty is relatively recent, the “new poor,” who throb with the ferment of frustration. ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=357)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The present-day workingman in the Western world feels unemployment as a degradation. He sees himself disinherited and injured by an unjust order of things, and is willing to listen to those who call for a new deal. ([Location 371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=371)) - Tags: [[favorite]] ##### The Abjectly Poor > Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams. ([Location 381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=381)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable; when conditions have so improved that an ideal state seems almost within reach. ([Location 386](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=386)) > “the French found their position the more intolerable the better it became.”5 ([Location 390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=390)) > It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt. ([Location 393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=393)) > Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing. ([Location 401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=401)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Rising Christianity preached the immediate end of the world and the kingdom of heaven around the corner; ([Location 407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=407)) > Later, as the movement comes into possession of power, the emphasis is shifted to the distant hope—the dream and the vision. ([Location 410](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=410)) ##### The Free Poor > Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. ([Location 420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=420)) > Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. ([Location 423](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=423)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be free from freedom.” ([Location 424](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=424)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility? ([Location 426](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=426)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Fanatics, says Renan, fear liberty more than they fear persecution. ([Location 437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=437)) > It is true that the adherents of a rising movement have a strong sense of liberation even though they live and breathe in an atmosphere of strict adherence to tenets and commands. This sense of liberation comes from having escaped the burdens, fears and hopelessness of an untenable individual existence. ([Location 438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=438)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. ([Location 446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=446)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. ([Location 446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=446)) > They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. ([Location 449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=449)) > The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. ([Location 450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=450)) > Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. ([Location 453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=453)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than freedom without equality. ([Location 454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=454)) - Tags: [[favorite]] ##### The Creative Poor > Poverty when coupled with creativeness is usually free of frustration. ([Location 456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=456)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out. ([Location 457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=457)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is impressive to observe how with a fading of the individual’s creative powers there appears a pronounced inclination toward joining a mass movement. ([Location 460](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=460)) > The slipping author, artist, scientist—slipping because of a drying-up of the creative flow within—drifts sooner or later into the camps of ardent patriots, race mongers, uplift promoters and champions of holy causes. ([Location 462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=462)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Perhaps the sexually impotent are subject to the same impulse. ([Location 463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=463)) ##### The Unified Poor > group—a tribe, a closely knit family, a compact racial or religious group—are relatively free of frustration and hence almost immune to the appeal of a proselytizing mass movement. ([Location 466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=466)) > It requires more misery and personal humiliation to goad him to revolt. ([Location 470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=470)) > The ideal potential convert is the individual who stands alone, who has no collective body he can blend with and lose himself in and so mask the pettiness, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence. ([Location 477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=477)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Where a mass movement finds the corporate pattern of family, tribe, country, etcetera, in a state of disruption and decay, it moves in and gathers the harvest. ([Location 478](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=478)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Almost all our contemporary movements showed in their early stages a hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt ([Location 485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=485)) > undermining the authority of the parents; ([Location 486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=486)) > taking over the responsibility for feeding, educating and entertaining the children; ([Location 486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=486)) > not one of our contemporary movements was so outspoken in its antagonism toward the family as was early Christianity. ([Location 488](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=488)) > Economic independence for women facilitates divorce. ([Location 508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=508)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > weakens parental authority and also hastens an early splitting up of the family group. ([Location 509](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=509)) > The drawing power of large industrial centers on people living on farms and in small towns strains and breaks family ties. ([Location 509](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=509)) > The spectacular modernization of Japan was accomplished in an atmosphere charged with the fervor of united action and group consciousness. ([Location 538](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=538)) > The employer whose only purpose is to keep his workers at their task and get all he can out of them is not likely to attain his goal by dividing them—playing off one worker against the other. It is rather in his interest that the workers should feel themselves part of a whole, and preferably a whole which comprises the employer, too. ([Location 544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=544)) > Experience shows that production is at its best when the workers feel and act as members of a team. Any policy that disturbs and tears apart the team is bound to cause severe trouble. ([Location 548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=548)) > Group incentive plans in which the bonus is based on the work of the whole team, including the foreman … are much more likely to promote greater productivity and greater satisfaction on the part of the workers.”21 ([Location 550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=550)) > Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization. ([Location 561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=561)) > Bolshevik movement outdistanced all other Marxist movements in the race for power because of its tight collective organization. ([Location 563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=563)) > The National Socialist movement, too, won out over all the other folkish movements which pullulated in the 1920's, because of Hitler’s early recognition that a rising mass movement can never go too far in advocating and promoting collective cohesion. ([Location 564](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=564)) > chief passion of the frustrated is “to belong,” and that there cannot be too much cementing and binding to satisfy this passion. ([Location 566](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=566)) > deracinated ([Location 572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=572)) > The villagers (pagani) and the heath-dwellers (heathen) clung longest to the ancient cults. ([Location 574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=574)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > When a church which was all-embracing relaxes its hold, new religious movements are likely to crystallize. ([Location 580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=580)) > H. G. Wells remarks that at the time of the Reformation people “objected not to the church’s power, but to its weaknesses…. Their movements against the church, within it and without, were movements not for release from a religious control, but for a fuller and more abundant religious control.” ([Location 581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=581)) > The French Revolution, which was also a nationalist movement, came as a reaction not against the vigorous tyranny of the Catholic Church and the ancient regime but against their weakness and ineffectuality. ([Location 584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=584)) > Later, when the Christian church had the power to segregate the Jews in ghettos, it gave their communal compactness an additional reinforcement, and thus, unintentionally, ensured the survival of Judaism intact through the ages. ([Location 590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=590)) > The coming of “enlightenment” undermined both orthodoxy and ghetto walls. Suddenly, and perhaps for the first time since the days of Job and Ecclesiastes, the Jew found himself an individual, terribly alone in a hostile world. There was no collective body he could blend with and lose himself in. ([Location 591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=591)) - Note: Enlightenment atomizes > danger point could have been reached had Nazi discipline and its totalitarian control been relaxed. ([Location 612](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=612)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Tocqueville says of a tyrannical government is true of all totalitarian orders—their moment of greatest danger is when they begin to reform, that is to say, when they begin to show liberal tendencies. ([Location 613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=613)) > On the other hand, a disintegrating army— ... is fertile ground for a proselytizing movement. ([Location 617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=617)) > temporary misfits: people who have not found their place in life but still hope to find it. Adolescent youth, unemployed college graduates, veterans, new immigrants and the like are of this category. ([Location 625](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=625)) > A prolonged war by national armies is likely to be followed by a period of social unrest for victors and vanquished alike. ([Location 631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=631)) > The most incurably frustrated—and, therefore, the most vehement—among the permanent misfits are those with an unfulfilled craving for creative work. ([Location 643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=643)) #### The Inordinately Selfish > The inordinately selfish are particularly susceptible to frustration. ([Location 651](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=651)) #### The Ambitious Facing Unlimited Opportunities > When opportunities are apparently unlimited, there is an inevitable deprecation of the present. ([Location 658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=658)) #### Minorities > A minority which preserves its identity is inevitably a compact whole which shelters the individual, gives him a sense of belonging and immunizes him against frustration. ([Location 667](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=667)) > On the other hand, in a minority bent on assimilation, the individual stands alone, pitted against prejudice and discrimination. ([Location 668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=668)) > The orthodox Jew is less frustrated than the emancipated Jew. ([Location 669](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=669)) #### The Bored > There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. ([Location 681](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=681)) > The consciousness of a barren, meaningless existence is the main fountainhead of boredom. ([Location 686](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=686)) > Hitler made full use of “the society ladies thirsting for adventure, sick of their empty lives, no longer getting a ‘kick’ out of love affairs.” ([Location 697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=697)) > Miriam Beard tells of a similar role played by bored wives of businessmen before the French Revolution: “they were devastated with boredom and given to fits of the vapors. Restlessly, they applauded innovators.” ([Location 700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=700)) #### The Sinners > Fervent patriotism as well as religious and revolutionary enthusiasm often serves as a refuge from a guilty conscience. ([Location 704](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=704)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It has been observed that in the exaltation of mass movements (whether patriotic, religious or revolutionary) common crime declines. ([Location 724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=724)) #### United Action and Self-Sacrifice > The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. ([Location 728](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=728)) > When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. ([Location 729](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=729)) > impossible to understand the nature of mass movements unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice. ([Location 731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=731)) > In times of peace and prosperity, a democratic nation is an institutionalized association of more or less free individuals. ([Location 737](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=737)) > in time of crisis, when the nation’s existence is threatened, and it tries to reinforce its unity and generate in its people a readiness for self-sacrifice, it almost always assumes in some degree the character of a mass movement. ([Location 738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=738)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The important point is that in the poignantly frustrated the propensities for united action and self-sacrifice arise spontaneously. ([Location 742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=742)) > What ails the frustrated? It is the consciousness of an irremediably blemished self. ([Location 744](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=744)) > 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. ([Location 746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=746)) > It is a book of thoughts, and it does not shy away from half-truths so long as they seem to hint at a new approach and help to formulate new questions. ([Location 758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=758)) > diminution. In order to become part of a compact whole, the individual has to forego much. He has to give up privacy, individual judgment and often individual possessions. ([Location 763](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=763)) #### Factors Promoting Self-sacrifice ##### Identification with a Collective Whole > The people who stood up best in the Nazi concentration camps were those who felt themselves members of a compact party (the Communists), of a church (priests and ministers), or of a close-knit national group. ([Location 797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=797)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > One realizes now that the ghetto of the Middle Ages was for the Jews more a fortress than a prison. ([Location 800](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=800)) > The unavoidable conclusion seems to be that when the individual faces torture or annihilation, he cannot rely on the resources of his own individuality. ([Location 803](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=803)) > It is somewhat terrifying to realize that the totalitarian leaders of our day, in recognizing this source of desperate courage, made use of it not only to steel the spirit of their followers but also to break the spirit of their opponents. ([Location 808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=808)) > The reason for this contrasting behavior is not that Stalin’s police are more ruthless than Hitler’s armies, but that when facing Stalin’s police the Russian feels a mere individual while, when facing the Germans, he saw himself a member of a mighty race, possessed of a glorious past and even more glorious future. ([Location 818](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=818)) > Similarly, in the case of the Jews, their behavior in Palestine could not have been predicted from their behavior in Europe. ([Location 820](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=820)) > formidable enemy: reckless, stubborn and resourceful. ([Location 823](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=823)) > The Jew in Europe faced his enemies alone, an isolated individual, a speck of life floating in an eternity of nothingness. ([Location 824](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=824)) > In Palestine he felt himself not a human atom, but a member of an eternal race, with an immemorable past behind it and a breathtaking future ahead. ([Location 825](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=825)) ##### Make-Believe > There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. ([Location 835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=835)) > Hitler dressed eighty million Germans in costumes and made them perform in a grandiose, heroic and bloody opera. ([Location 840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=840)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > people of London acted heroically under a hail of bombs because Churchill cast them in the role of heroes. ([Location 842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=842)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is doubtful whether in our contemporary world, with its widespread individual differentiation, any measure of general self-sacrifice can be realized without theatrical hocus-pocus and fireworks. ([Location 844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=844)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The untheatricality of most British Socialist leaders is a mark of uprightness and intellectual integrity, but it handicaps the experiment of nationalization which is undoubtedly the central purpose of their lives.1 ([Location 847](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=847)) > The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death. ([Location 849](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=849)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is possible that the frustrated are more responsive to the might and splendor of the mass than people who are self-sufficient. ([Location 860](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=860)) ##### Deprecation of the Present > The battle line is now drawn between things that are and have been, and the things that are not yet. ([Location 870](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=870)) > The prime objective of the ascetic ideal preached by most movements is to breed contempt for the present. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=875)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > There can be no genuine deprecation of the present without the assured hope of a better future. ([Location 883](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=883)) > All mass movements deprecate the present by depicting it as a mean preliminary to a glorious future; a mere doormat on the threshold of the millennium. ([Location 886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=886)) > To a religious movement the present is a place of exile, a vale of tears leading to the heavenly kingdom; ([Location 887](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=887)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The behavior of the members of the Donner party when they were buoyed by hope and, later, when hope was gone illustrates the dependence of cooperativeness and the communal spirit on hope. ([Location 895](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=895)) > The enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, “their lives made bitter with hard bondage,” were a bickering, back-biting lot. Moses had to give them hope of a promised land before he could join them together. ([Location 897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=897)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Thus, though a mass movement at first turns its back on the past, it eventually develops a vivid awareness, often specious, of a distant glorious past. ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=905)) > Religious movements go back to the day of creation; ([Location 906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=906)) > social revolutions tell of a golden age when men were free, equal and independent; ([Location 907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=907)) > nationalist movements revive or invent memories of past greatness. ([Location 907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=907)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The well-adjusted make poor prophets. ([Location 918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=918)) > A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic change. ([Location 919](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=919)) > Thus it happens that when the times become unhinged, it is the practical people who are caught unaware and are made to look like visionaries who cling to things that do not exist. ([Location 922](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=922)) > Hence the frustrated individual and the true believer make better prognosticators than those who have reason to want the preservation of the status quo. ([Location 925](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=925)) > The conservative doubts that the present can be bettered, and he tries to shape the future in the image of the present. ([Location 929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=929)) > To the skeptic the present is the sum of all that has been and shall be. ([Location 934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=934)) > The liberal sees the present as the legitimate offspring of the past and as constantly growing and developing toward an improved future: to damage the present is to maim the future. ([Location 936](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=936)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The radical and the reactionary loathe the present. ([Location 941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=941)) > The radical has a passionate faith in the infinite perfectibility of human nature. ([Location 943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=943)) > The reactionary does not believe that man has unfathomed potentialities for good in him. ([Location 945](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=945)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In reality the boundary line between radical and reactionary is not always distinct. ([Location 947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=947)) > It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings. ([Location 964](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=964)) ##### “Things Which are Not” > It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have “something worth fighting for,” they do not feel like fighting. ([Location 973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=973)) > Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself. ([Location 975](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=975)) > Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs. ([Location 986](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=986)) > It is not altogether absurd that people should be ready to die for a button, a flag, a word, an opinion, a myth and so on. It is on the contrary the least reasonable thing to give one’s life for something palpably worth having. ([Location 989](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=989)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Where there is no hope, people either run, or allow themselves to be killed without a fight. ([Location 993](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=993)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > They will hang on to life as in a daze. How else explain the fact that millions of Europeans allowed themselves to be led into annihilation camps and gas chambers, knowing beyond doubt that they were being led to death? ([Location 994](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=994)) #### Doctrine > He who is free to draw conclusions from his individual experience and observation is not usually hospitable to the idea of martyrdom. For self-sacrifice is an unreasonable act. It cannot be the end-product of a process of probing and deliberating. ([Location 1005](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1005)) > All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. ([Location 1007](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1007)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. ([Location 1008](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1008)) > Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move.13 ([Location 1018](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1018)) > And it is the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believer impervious to the uncertainties, surprises and the unpleasant realities of the world around him. ([Location 1019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1019)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be “contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.”14 57 ([Location 1022](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1022)) > No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. ([Location 1025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1025)) > The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds. ([Location 1032](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1032)) > “It is the heart which is conscious of God, not the reason.”16 Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934, exhorted his hearers: “Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains; all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts.” ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1033)) > If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. ([Location 1038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1038)) > Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness. ([Location 1042](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1042)) > To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of familiarity spread over the whole of eternity. There are no surprises and no unknowns. All questions have already been answered, all decisions made, all eventualities foreseen. ([Location 1044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1044)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The true believer is emboldened to attempt the unprecedented and the impossible not only because his doctrine gives him a sense of omnipotence but also because it gives him unqualified confidence in the future. (See Section 4.) ([Location 1051](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1051)) > Pascal was of the opinion that “one was well-minded to understand holy writ when one hated oneself.” ([Location 1056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1056)) #### Fanaticism > The surprise lessens when we realize that the chief preoccupation of an active mass movement is to instill in its followers a facility for united action and self-sacrifice, and that it achieves this facility by stripping each human entity of its distinctness and autonomy and turning it into an anonymous particle with no will and no judgment of its own. ([Location 1070](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1070)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > almost always proceeds in an atmosphere of intense passion. ([Location 1075](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1075)) > Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world. ([Location 1078](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1078)) > Man on his own is a helpless, miserable and sinful creature. His only salvation is in rejecting his self and in finding a new life in the bosom of a holy corporate body—be it a church, a nation or a party. In its turn, this vilification of the self keeps passion at a white heat. ([Location 1083](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1083)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources—out of his rejected self—but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. ([Location 1086](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1086)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Though his single-minded dedication is a holding on for dear life, he easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. ([Location 1088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1088)) > The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to. Often, indeed, it is his need for passionate attachment which turns every cause he embraces into a holy cause. ([Location 1092](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1092)) > The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. ([Location 1095](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1095)) > He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. ([Location 1095](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1095)) > But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. ([Location 1096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1096)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > He cannot be convinced but only converted. ([Location 1097](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1097)) > And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal. ([Location 1101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1101)) > 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. ([Location 1103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1103)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Most of the traitors in the Second World War came from the extreme right. ([Location 1109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1109)) > “There seems to be a thin line between violent, extreme nationalism and treason.” ([Location 1109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1109)) > All of us who lived through the Hitler decade know that the reactionary and the radical have more in common than either has with the liberal or the conservative. ([Location 1111](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1111)) > He sees in tolerance a sign of weakness, frivolity and ignorance. He hungers for the deep assurance which comes with total surrender—with the wholehearted clinging to a creed and a cause. ([Location 1116](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1116)) > He is even ready to join in a holy crusade against his former holy cause, but it must be a genuine crusade—uncompromising, intolerant, proclaiming the one and only truth. ([Location 1118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1118)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Thus the millions of ex-fanatics in defeated Germany and Japan are more responsive to the preaching of communism and militant Catholicism than to the teaching of the democratic way of life. ([Location 1119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1119)) > Communist Russia can easily turn Japanese war prisoners into fanatical Communists, while no American propaganda, however subtle and perfect, can turn them into freedom-loving democrats. ([Location 1122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1122)) #### Mass Movements and Armies > It is well at this point, before leaving the subject of self-sacrifice, to have a look at the similarities and differences between mass movements and armies— ([Location 1125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1125)) > The similarities are many: both mass movements and armies are collective bodies; ([Location 1127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1127)) > both strip the individual of his separateness and distinctness; ([Location 1128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1128)) > both demand self-sacrifice, unquestioning obedience and singlehearted allegiance; ([Location 1128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1128)) > both make extensive use of make-belief to promote daring and united action ([Location 1129](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1129)) > both can serve as a refuge for the frustrated who cannot endure an autonomous existence. ([Location 1129](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1129)) > Foreign Legion attracts many of the types who usually rush to join a new movement. ([Location 1130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1130)) > But the army is mainly an instrument devised for the preservation or expansion of an established order— ([Location 1133](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1133)) > The mass movement, on the other hand, seems an instrument of eternity, and those who join it do so for life. ([Location 1135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1135)) > The army is an instrument for bolstering, protecting and expanding the present. ([Location 1136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1136)) > The mass movement comes to destroy the present. ([Location 1136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1136)) > When a mass movement begins to be preoccupied with the present, it means that it has arrived. ([Location 1137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1137)) > Being an instrument of the present, an army deals mainly with the possible. ([Location 1143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1143)) > the leader of a mass movement has an overwhelming contempt for the present—for all its stubborn facts and perplexities, even those of geography and the weather. ([Location 1144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1144)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > His hatred of the present (his nihilism) comes to the fore when the situation becomes desperate. He destroys his country and his people rather than surrender. ([Location 1146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1146)) > De Tocqueville observes that soldiers are “the men who lose their heads most easily, and who generally show themselves weakest on days of revolution.” ([Location 1155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1155)) > He knows how to suppress the mass but not how to win it. ([Location 1159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1159)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > mass movement leader—from Moses to Hitler—draws his inspiration from the sea of upturned faces, and the roar of the mass is as the voice of God in his ears. ([Location 1159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1159)) ##### Unifying Agents > Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. ([Location 1165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1165)) > Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. ([Location 1169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1169)) > I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.” ([Location 1173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1173)) > One of Chiang Kai-shek’s most serious shortcomings was his failure to find an appropriate new devil once the Japanese enemy vanished from the scene at the end of the war. ([Location 1179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1179)) > Hitler used anti-Semitism not only to unify his Germans but also to sap the resoluteness of Jew-hating Poland, Rumania, Hungary, and finally even France. He made a similar use of anti-communism. ([Location 1184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1184)) > When Hitler picked the Jew as his devil, he peopled practically the whole world outside Germany with Jews or those who worked for them. ([Location 1188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1188)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Every difficulty and failure within the movement is the work of the devil, and every success is a triumph over his evil plotting.7 ([Location 1194](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1194)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Finally, it seems, the ideal devil is a foreigner. ([Location 1195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1195)) > To qualify as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry. ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1196)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In the French Revolution the aristocrats were seen as “descendants of barbarous Germans, while French commoners were descendants of civilized Gauls and Romans.” ([Location 1198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1198)) > In the Puritan Revolution the royalists “were labeled ‘Normans,’ descendants of a group of foreign invaders.” ([Location 1200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1200)) > We do not usually look for allies when we love. ([Location 1202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1202)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > But we always look for allies when we hate. ([Location 1203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1203)) > It is chiefly the unreasonable hatreds that drive us to merge with those who hate as we do, and it is this kind of hatred that serves as one of the most effective cementing agents. ([Location 1205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1205)) > Self-contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others—and there is a most determined and persistent effort to mask this switch. ([Location 1208](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1208)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Even in the case of a just grievance, our hatred comes less from a wrong done to us than from the consciousness of our helplessness, inadequacy and cowardice—in other words from self-contempt. ([Location 1211](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1211)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Often, when we are wronged by one person, we turn our hatred on a wholly unrelated person or group. ([Location 1215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1215)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Germans, aggrieved by the Versailles treaty, avenged themselves by exterminating Jews; ([Location 1217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1217)) > white trash, exploited by Dixiecrats, lynch Blacks. ([Location 1217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1217)) > Self-contempt produces in man “the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults.” ([Location 1218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1218)) > We do not make people humble and meek when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of themselves. We are more likely to stir their arrogance and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness. Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us. ([Location 1224](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1224)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him. ([Location 1227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1227)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > A sublime religion inevitably generates a strong feeling of guilt. There is an unavoidable contrast between loftiness of profession and imperfection of practice. ([Location 1232](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1232)) > It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. ([Location 1235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1235)) > The Japanese had an advantage over us in that they admired us more than we admired them. ([Location 1236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1236)) > The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. ([Location 1237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1237)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life. ([Location 1239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1239)) > Hitler took the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion for his guide and textbook; he followed them “down to the veriest detail.” ([Location 1243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1243)) - Note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion 1901 a fake document. But Hoffer believes to be real at this point. > It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors. ([Location 1245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1245)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > That the evil men do lives after them is partly due to the fact that those who have reason to hate the evil most shape themselves after it and thus perpetuate it. ([Location 1245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1245)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is obvious, therefore, that the influence of the fanatic is bound to be out of all proportion to his abilities. ([Location 1246](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1246)) > image. Fanatic Christianity puts its imprint upon the ancient world both by gaining adherents and by evoking in its pagan opponents a strange fervor and a new ruthlessness. ([Location 1248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1248)) > Hitler imposed himself upon the world both by promoting Nazism and by forcing the democracies to become zealous, intolerant and ruthless. ([Location 1249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1249)) > Communist Russia shapes both its adherents and its opponents in its own image. ([Location 1250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1250)) > Thus, though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. ([Location 1250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1250)) > We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend. ([Location 1251](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1251)) > It is of the utmost importance, he said, that the National Socialist should seek and deserve the violent hatred of his enemies. ([Location 1253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1253)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > There is a deep reassurance for the frustrated in witnessing the downfall of the fortunate and the disgrace of the righteous. ([Location 1259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1259)) > Chaos, like the grave, is a haven of equality. ([Location 1260](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1260)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Their clamor for a millennium is shot through with a hatred for all that exists, and a craving for the end of the world. ([Location 1262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1262)) > Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both. ([Location 1264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1264)) > All our enthusiasms, devotions, passions and hopes, when they decompose, release hatred. ([Location 1269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1269)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Said Martin Luther: “When my heart is cold and I cannot pray as I should I scourge myself with the thought of the impiety and ingratitude of my enemies, the Pope and his accomplices and vermin, and Zwingli, so that my heart swells with righteous indignation and hatred and I can say with warmth and vehemence: ‘Holy be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done!’ And the hotter I grow the more ardent do my prayers become.” ([Location 1270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1270)) > The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is that the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. ([Location 1280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1280)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom—freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. ([Location 1286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1286)) > The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness. ([Location 1294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1294)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The torture chamber is a corporate institution. ([Location 1299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1299)) > The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others. ([Location 1310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1310)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself. ([Location 1313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1313)) > The more we mistrust our judgment and luck, the more are we ready to follow the example of others. ([Location 1314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1314)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Mere rejection of the self, even when not accompanied by a search for a new identity, can lead to increased imitativeness. ([Location 1315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1315)) > A feeling of superiority counteracts imitation. Had the millions of immigrants who came to this country been superior people—the cream of the countries they came from—there would have been not one U.S.A. but a mosaic of lingual and cultural groups. It was due to the fact that the majority of the immigrants were of the lowest and the poorest, the despised and the rejected, that the heterogeneous millions blended so rapidly and thoroughly. ([Location 1319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1319)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The faithful are easily led and molded, but they are also particularly susceptible to foreign influences. ([Location 1335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1335)) > The preaching of all mass movements bristles with admonitions against copying foreign models and “doing after all their abominations.” ([Location 1336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1336)) > Every device is used to cut off the faithful from intercourse with unbelievers. Some mass movements go to the extreme of leading their following into the wilderness in order to allow an undisturbed settling of the new pattern of life. ([Location 1339](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1339)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > However, an active mass movement prizes hatred above passive contempt; ([Location 1342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1342)) > countries not animated by a spirit of unity. ([Location 1347](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1347)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### Persuasion and Coercion > We tend today to exaggerate the effectiveness of persuasion as a means of inculcating opinion and shaping behavior. ([Location 1351](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1351)) > Were propaganda by itself one-tenth as potent as it is made out to be, the totalitarian regimes of Russia, Germany, Italy and Spain would have been mild affairs. ([Location 1355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1355)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > They would have been blatant and brazen but without the ghastly brutality of secret police, concentration camps and mass extermination. ([Location 1356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1356)) > propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; ([Location 1357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1357)) > nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. ([Location 1358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1358)) > It penetrates only into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. ([Location 1358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1358)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already “know.” ([Location 1361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1361)) > They cannot see but what they have already imagined, ([Location 1363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1363)) > Indeed, it is easier for the frustrated to detect their own imaginings and hear the echo of their own musings in impassioned double-talk and sonorous refrains than in precise words joined together with faultless logic. ([Location 1364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1364)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > To maintain itself, a mass movement has to order things so that when the people no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force. ([Location 1366](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1366)) > Dr. Goebbels admits in an unguarded moment that “A sharp sword must always stand behind propaganda if it is to be really effective.” ([Location 1369](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1369)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Propaganda thus serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; ([Location 1377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1377)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is probably as true that violence breeds fanaticism as that fanaticism begets violence. ([Location 1379](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1379)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > 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. ([Location 1384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1384)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Every lynching in our South not only intimidates the Negro but also invigorates the fanatical conviction of white supremacy. ([Location 1385](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1385)) > Fanatical orthodoxy is in all movements a late development. It comes when the movement is in full possession of power and can impose its faith by force as well as by persuasion. ([Location 1391](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1391)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It was the temporal sword that made Christianity a world religion. Conquest and conversion went hand in hand, the latter often serving as a justification and a tool for the former. ([Location 1400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1400)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In the phenomenal spread of Islam, conquest was a primary factor and conversion a by-product. ([Location 1403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1403)) > Said Melanchthon, Luther’s wisest lieutenant: “Without the intervention of the civil authority what would our precepts become?—Platonic laws.” ([Location 1407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1407)) > again. In the case of the French Revolution, “It was the armies of the Revolution, not its ideas, that penetrated throughout the whole of Europe.” ([Location 1409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1409)) > latter. Persuasion is clumsy and its results uncertain. ([Location 1414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1414)) > The assertion that a mass movement cannot be stopped by force is not literally true. Force can stop and crush even the most vigorous movement. But to do so the force must be ruthless and persistent. ([Location 1419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1419)) > “Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook. The terrorism which emanates from individual brutality neither goes far enough nor lasts long enough. It is spasmodic, subject to moods and hesitations. “But as soon as force wavers and alternates with forbearance, not only will the doctrine to be repressed recover again and again, but it will also be in a position to draw new benefit from every persecution.” The holy terror only knows no limit and never flags. Thus it seems that we need ardent faith not only to be able to resist coercion, but also to be able to exercise it effectively. ([Location 1421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1421)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > pressing feeling of insufficiency at the center. Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. ([Location 1433](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1433)) > It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. ([Location 1434](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1434)) > The more unworkable communism proves in Russia, and the more its leaders are compelled to compromise and adulterate the original creed, the more brazen and arrogant will be their attack on a non-believing world. ([Location 1439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1439)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The slaveholders of the South became the more aggressive in spreading their way of life the more it became patent that their position was untenable in a modern world. If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident. ([Location 1441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1441)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### Leadership > No matter how vital we think the role of leadership in the rise of a mass movement, there is no doubt that the leader cannot create the conditions which make the rise of a movement possible. ([Location 1447](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1447)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > When conditions are not ripe, the potential leader, no matter how gifted, and his holy cause, no matter how potent, remain without a following. ([Location 1450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1450)) > The First World War and its aftermath readied the ground for the rise of the Bolshevik, Fascist and Nazi movements. ([Location 1451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1451)) > The European masses up to the cataclysmic events of the First World War had not utterly despaired of the present and were, therefore, not willing to sacrifice it for a new life and a new world. ([Location 1454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1454)) > Militant nationalism and militant revolutionism seem to be contemporaneous. ([Location 1456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1456)) > “The commanding man in a momentous day seems only to be the last accident in a series.”42 ([Location 1462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1462)) > A genuine leader (a Socialist Churchill) at the head of the Labor government would have initiated the drastic reforms of nationalization in the fervent atmosphere of a mass movement and not in the undramatic drabness of Socialist austerity. ([Location 1470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1470)) > Exceptional intelligence, noble character and originality seem neither indispensable nor perhaps desirable. ([Location 1482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1482)) > The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants. ([Location 1482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1482)) > The uncanny powers of a leader manifest themselves not so much in the hold he has on the masses as in his ability to dominate and almost bewitch a small group of able men. ([Location 1487](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1487)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > These men must be fearless, proud, intelligent and capable of organizing and running large-scale undertakings, and yet they must submit wholly to the will of the leader, draw their inspiration and driving force from him, and glory in this submission. ([Location 1488](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1488)) > Trotsky’s failure as a leader came from his neglect, or more probably his inability, to create a machine of able and loyal lieutenants. ([Location 1492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1492)) > The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world. ([Location 1508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1508)) > The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. ([Location 1511](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1511)) > His strength lies in his blind spots and in plugging all outlets but one. ([Location 1517](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1517)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > “Not to reason why” is considered by all mass movements the mark of a strong and generous spirit. ([Location 1525](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1525)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person. ([Location 1528](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1528)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In this country, the American employer often finds in the racial fanatic of our South—so given to mass violence—a respectful and docile factory hand. ([Location 1531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1531)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The army, too, finds him particularly amenable to discipline. ([Location 1532](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1532)) > People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. ([Location 1534](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1534)) > To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. ([Location 1535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1535)) > 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. ([Location 1544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1544)) > One of the reasons that Communist leaders are losing out in our unions is that by following the line and adopting the tactics of the party, they are assuming the attitude and using the tactics of a mass movement leader in an organization made up of free men. ([Location 1554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1554)) #### Action > It is doubtful whether without the vast action involved in the conquest of a continent, our nation of immigrants could have attained its amazing homogeneity in so short a time. ([Location 1560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1560)) > They felt superior, and inevitably insulated themselves against the new environment. ([Location 1568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1568)) > Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie. ([Location 1569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1569)) > The real International is that of men of action. ([Location 1573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1573)) > All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. ([Location 1574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1574)) > 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. ([Location 1574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1574)) > Hermann Rauschning, who at first thought this eternal marching a senseless waste of time and energy, recognized later its subtle effect. “Marching diverts men’s thoughts. Marching kills thought. Marching makes an end of individuality.” ([Location 1577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1577)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > to feel that one is backed by a mysterious power whether it be God, destiny or the law of history; to be convinced that one’s opponents are the incarnation of evil and must be crushed; to exult in self-denial and devotion to duty—these are admirable qualifications for resolute and ruthless action in any field. ([Location 1586](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1586)) > true believer for a life of action can be as much a danger as an aid to the prospects of a mass movement. ([Location 1591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1591)) > The explosive situation in Germany after the First World War was partly due to the inactivity forced upon a population that knew itself admirably equipped for action. Hitler gave them a mass movement. ([Location 1603](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1603)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### Suspicion > Suspicion too is an ingredient of this acrid slime, and it too can act as a unifying agent. ([Location 1608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1608)) > Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. ([Location 1610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1610)) > There is prying and spying, tense watching and a tense awareness of being watched. The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension but to strict conformity. ([Location 1612](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1612)) > zealously to prescribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith. ([Location 1614](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1614)) > This enemy—the indispensable devil of every mass movement—is omnipresent. ([Location 1620](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1620)) > The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole—the church, party, nation—and not to his fellow true believer. ([Location 1624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1624)) > True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society. ([Location 1625](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1625)) #### The Effects of Unification > “We Germans are so happy. We are free from freedom.” ([Location 1650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1650)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is doubtful whether the excommunicated priest, the expelled Communist and the renegade chauvinist can ever find peace of mind as autonomous individuals. They cannot stand on their own, but must embrace a new cause and attach themselves to a new group. ([Location 1658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1658)) > The true believer is eternally incomplete, eternally insecure. ([Location 1660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1660)) > By elevating dogma above reason, the individual’s intelligence is prevented from becoming self-reliant. ([Location 1662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1662)) > deliberately created scarcity of the necessities of life. ([Location 1664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1664)) > Ruthless censorship of literature, art, music and science prevents even the creative few from living self-sufficient lives. ([Location 1665](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1665)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### PART 4 #### Beginning and End #### Men of Words > Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance. ([Location 1673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1673)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > But these fanatics can move in and take charge only after the prevailing order has been discredited and has lost the allegiance of the masses. ([Location 1680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1680)) > Things are different in the case of the typical man of words. The masses listen to him because they know that his words, however urgent, cannot have immediate results. The authorities either ignore him or use mild methods to muzzle him. Thus imperceptibly the man of words undermines established institutions, discredits those in power, weakens prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and sets the stage for the rise of a mass movement. ([Location 1688](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1688)) > Thus imperceptibly the man of words undermines established institutions, discredits those in power, weakens prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and sets the stage for the rise of a mass movement. ([Location 1689](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1689)) > The emergence of an articulate minority where there was none before is a potential revolutionary step. ([Location 1697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1697)) > Many of the revolutionary leaders in India, China and Indonesia received their training in conservative Western institutions. ([Location 1699](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1699)) > The American college at Beirut, which is directed and supported by Godfearing, conservative Americans, is a school for revolutionaries in the illiterate Arabic world. ([Location 1700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1700)) > Nor is there any doubt that the Godfearing missionary school teachers in China were unknowingly among those who prepared the ground for the Chinese revolution. ([Location 1701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1701)) > “Vanity,” said Napoleon, “made the Revolution; liberty was only a pretext.” ([Location 1707](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1707)) > At a certain stage, most men of words are ready to become timeservers and courtiers. ([Location 1714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1714)) > Thoreau states the fact with fierce extravagance: “I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted … and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.” ([Location 1723](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1723)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Burke patronized by lords and nobles spoke of the “swinish multitude” and recommended to the poor “patience, labor, sobriety, frugality, and religion.” ([Location 1730](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1730)) > Where all learned men are bureaucrats or where education gives a man an acknowledged superior status, the prevailing order is likely to be free from movements of protest. ([Location 1736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1736)) > The stability of Imperial China, like that of ancient Egypt, was due to an intimate alliance between the bureaucracy and the literati. It is of interest that the Taiping rebellion, the only effective Chinese mass movement while the Empire was still a going concern, was started by a scholar who failed again and again in the state examination for the highest mandarin caste. ([Location 1743](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1743)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > had the British in India instead of cultivating the Nizams, Maharajas, Nawabs, Gekawars and so on made an effort to win the Indian intellectual; had they treated him as an equal, encouraged him in his work and allowed him a share of the fleshpots, they could perhaps have maintained their rule there indefinitely. ([Location 1757](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1757)) > intellectual both as a man of words and as an Indian. The British in India tried to preserve the realm of action for themselves. They did not to any real extent encourage the Indians to become engineers, agronomists or technicians. The educational institutions they established produced “impractical” men of words; and it is an irony of fate that this system, instead of safeguarding British rule, hastened its end. ([Location 1761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1761)) > The majority of the Palestinian Jews, although steeped in action, are by upbringing and tradition men of words, and thin-skinned to a fault. They smarted under the contemptuous attitude of the British official who looked on the Jews as on a pack of unmanly and ungrateful quibblers—an easy prey for the warlike Arabs once Britain withdrew its protective hand. ([Location 1765](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1765)) > The men of letters of eighteenth-century France are the most familiar example of intellectuals pioneering a mass movement. ([Location 1774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1774)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The rapid spread of Christianity in the Roman world was partly due to the fact that the pagan cults it sought to supplant were already thoroughly discredited. ([Location 1777](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1777)) > The discrediting was done, before and after the birth of Christianity, by the Greek philosophers who were bored with the puerility of the cults and denounced and ridiculed them in schools and city streets. ([Location 1778](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1778)) > Christianity made little headway against Judaism because the Jewish religion had the ardent allegiance of the Jewish men of words. ([Location 1779](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1779)) > But it is equally true that all nationalist movements— ... were conceived not by men of action but by faultfinding intellectuals. ([Location 1784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1784)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > German intellectuals were the originators of German nationalism, just as Jewish intellectuals were the originators of Zionism. ([Location 1790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1790)) > It was Napoleon’s humiliation of the Germans, ([Location 1793](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1793)) > Theodore Herzl and the Jewish intellectuals were driven to Zionism by the humiliations heaped upon millions of Jews in Russia, ([Location 1794](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1794)) > To a degree the nationalist movement which forced the British rulers out of India had its inception in the humiliation of a scrawny and bespectacled Indian man of words in South Africa. ([Location 1796](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1796)) > What is not so obvious is the process by which the discrediting of existing beliefs and institutions makes possible the rise of a new fanatical faith. ([Location 1799](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1799)) > The Frenchmen of the enlightenment who debunked the church and the crown and preached reason and tolerance released a burst of revolutionary and nationalist fanaticism which has not abated yet. ([Location 1804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1804)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > When we debunk a fanatical faith or prejudice, we do not strike at the root of fanaticism. ([Location 1807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1807)) > Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist. ([Location 1816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1816)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > To sum up, the militant man of words prepares the ground for the rise of a mass movement: 1) by discrediting prevailing creeds and institutions and detaching from them the allegiance of the people; 2) by indirectly creating a hunger for faith in the hearts of those who cannot live without it, so that when the new faith is preached it finds an eager response among the disillusioned masses; 3) by furnishing the doctrine and the slogans of the new faith; 4) by undermining the convictions of the “better people"— those who can get along without faith—so that when the new fanaticism makes its appearance they are without the capacity to resist it. They see no sense in dying for convictions and principles, and yield to the new order without a fight. ([Location 1817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1817)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Thus when the irreverent intellectual has done his work: The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand, Surely the Second Coming… ([Location 1823](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1823)) > The tragic figures in the history of a mass movement are often the intellectual precursors who live long enough to see the downfall of the… ([Location 1827](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1827)) > The fact that mass movements as they arise often manifest less individual freedom18 than the order they supplant, is usually ascribed to the trickery of a power-hungry clique that kidnaps the movement at a critical… ([Location 1830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1830)) > However, the freedom the masses crave is not freedom of self-expression and self-realization, but freedom from the intolerable burden of an autonomous existence. ([Location 1835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1835)) > They want freedom from “the fearful burden of… ([Location 1836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1836)) > burden of an autonomous… ([Location 1836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1836)) > They do not want freedom of conscience, but faith—blind,… ([Location 1838](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1838)) > anonymity and a new structure of perfect unity. It is not the wickedness of the old regime they rise against but its weakness; not its oppression, but its failure to hammer… ([Location 1840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1840)) > unity. It is not the wickedness of the old regime they rise against but its weakness; not its oppression, but its failure to hammer them together into one solid, mighty whole. The persuasiveness of the intellectual demagogue consists not so much in convicting people of the vileness of the established order as in demonstrating its helpless incompetence. The immediate result of a… ([Location 1840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1840)) > of the intellectual demagogue consists not so much in convicting people of the vileness of the established order as in… ([Location 1841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1841)) > The reason for the tragic fate which almost always overtakes the intellectual midwives of a mass movement is that, no matter how much they preach and glorify the united… ([Location 1843](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1843)) > They believe in the possibility of individual happiness and the validity of individual opinion and initiative. But once a movement gets rolling, power falls into the hands of those who have… ([Location 1845](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1845)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### The… > When the moment is ripe, only the fanatic can hatch a… ([Location 1850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1850)) > When the old order begins to fall apart, many of the vociferous men of words, who prayed so long for the day, are in a funk. The first glimpse of the face of anarchy frightens them out of their wits. They forget all they said about the “poor simple folk” and run for help to strong men of action—princes, generals, administrators,… ([Location 1853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1853)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Not so the fanatic. Chaos is his element. ([Location 1856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1856)) > When the old order begins to crack, he wades in with all his might and recklessness to blow the whole hated present to high heaven. ([Location 1857](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1857)) > All that already exists is rubbish, and there is no sense in reforming rubbish. ([Location 1858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1858)) > He alone knows the innermost craving of the masses in action: the craving for communion, for the mustering of the host, for the dissolution of cursed individuality in the majesty and grandeur of a mighty whole. ([Location 1861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1861)) > Posterity is king; and woe to those, inside and outside the movement, who hug and hang on to the present. ([Location 1862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1862)) > The most significant division between men of words is between those who can find fulfillment in creative work and those who cannot. ([Location 1864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1864)) > His passion is to reform and not to destroy. When the mass movement remains wholly in his keeping, he turns it into a mild affair. ([Location 1866](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1866)) > Robespierre, Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler are outstanding examples of fanatics arising from the ranks of noncreative men of words. ([Location 1877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1877)) > Peter Viereck points out that most of the Nazi bigwigs had artistic and literary ambitions which they could not realize. Hitler tried painting and architecture; Goebbels, drama, the novel and poetry; Rosenberg, architecture and philosophy; von Schirach, poetry; Funk, music; Streicher, painting. “Almost all were failures, not only by the usual vulgar criterion of success but by their own artistic criteria.” Their artistic and literary ambitions “were originally far deeper than political ambitions: and were integral parts of their personalities.”2 The creative man of words is ill at ease in the atmosphere of an active movement. He feels that its whirl and passion sap his creative energies. So long as he is conscious of the creative flow within him, he will not find fulfillment in leading ([Location 1878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1878)) > Their artistic and literary ambitions “were originally far deeper than political ambitions: and were integral parts of their personalities.” ([Location 1881](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1881)) > The creative man of words is ill at ease in the atmosphere of an active movement. He feels that its whirl and passion sap his creative energies. ([Location 1883](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1883)) > Moreover, since the genuine man of words can never wholeheartedly and for long suppress his critical faculty, he is inevitably cast in the role of the heretic. ([Location 1885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1885)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Thus unless the creative man of words stifles the newborn movement by allying himself with practical men of action or unless he dies at the right moment, he is likely to end up either a shunned recluse or in exile or facing a firing squad. ([Location 1886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1886)) > The danger of the fanatic to the development of a movement is that he cannot settle down. ([Location 1889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1889)) > Once victory has been won and the new order begins to crystallize, the fanatic becomes an element of strain and disruption. ([Location 1889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1889)) > Thus on the morrow of victory most mass movements find themselves in the grip of dissension. ([Location 1891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1891)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Hatred has become a habit. ([Location 1893](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1893)) > If allowed to have their way, the fanatics may split a movement into schism and heresies which threaten its existence. ([Location 1901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1901)) > Even when the fanatics do not breed dissension, they can still wreck the movement by driving it to attempt the impossible. ([Location 1901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1901)) #### The Practical Men of Action > A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action. ([Location 1905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1905)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is usually an advantage to a movement, and perhaps a prerequisite for its endurance, that these roles should be played by different men succeeding each other as conditions require. ([Location 1906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1906)) > There are, of course, rare leaders such as Lincoln, Gandhi, even F.D.R., Churchill and Nehru. They do not hesitate to harness man’s hungers and fears to weld a following and make it zealous unto death in the service of a holy cause; but unlike a Hitler, a Stalin, or even a Luther and a Calvin,1 they are not tempted to use the slime of frustrated souls as mortar in the building of a new world. ([Location 1921](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1921)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The genuine man of action is not a man of faith but a man of law. ([Location 1941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1941)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Hitler, who had a clear vision of the whole course of a movement even while he was nursing his infant National Socialism, warned that a movement retains its vigor only so long as it can offer nothing in the present—only “honor and fame in the eyes of posterity,” and that when it is invaded by those who want to make the most of the present “the ‘mission’ of such a movement is done for.” ([Location 1967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1967)) #### Good and Bad Mass Movements #### The Unattractiveness and Sterility of the Active Phase 117 > The fanatic who personifies this phase is usually an unattractive human type. He is ruthless, self-righteous, credulous, disputatious, petty and rude. ([Location 1979](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1979)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Note: Trump > The mass movement leader who benefits his people and humanity knows not only how to start a movement, but, like Gandhi, when to end its active phase. ([Location 1986](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1986)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Whenever we find a period of genuine creativeness associated with a mass movement, it is almost always a period which either precedes or, more often, follows the active phase. Provided the active phase of the movement is not too long and does not involve excessive bloodletting and destruction, its termination, particularly when it is abrupt, often releases a burst of creativeness. ([Location 1990](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1990)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > All the muses—even the plebeian muse of journalism in spite of her sturdy hips—have hard sledding in times of revolution.” ([Location 1998](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=1998)) > Milton, who in 1640 was a poet of great promise, with a draft of Paradise Lost in his pocket, spent twenty sterile years of pamphlet writing while he was up to his neck in the “sea of noises and hoarse disputes”5 which was the Puritan Revolution. With the Revolution dead and himself in disgrace, he produced Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. ([Location 2002](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2002)) > The blindness of the fanatic is a source of strength (he sees no obstacles), but it is the cause of intellectual sterility and emotional monotony. ([Location 2019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2019)) > The fanatic is also mentally cocky, and hence barren of new beginnings. At the root of his cockiness is the conviction that life and the universe conform to a simple formula—his formula. ([Location 2021](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2021)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Much that strikes us as new in the methods of the Nazis and Communists stems from the fact that they are running (or trying to run) vast territorial empires the way a Ford or a DuPont runs his industrial empire. ([Location 2028](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2028)) #### Some Factors Which Determine the Length of the Active Phase 120 > Said Oliver Cromwell: “A man never goes so far as when he does not know whither he is going.”8 ([Location 2036](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2036)) > When a mass movement is set in motion to free a nation from tyranny, either domestic or foreign, or to resist an aggressor, or to renovate a backward society, there is a natural point of termination once the struggle with the enemy is over or the process of reorganization is nearing completion. ([Location 2038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2038)) > On the other hand, when the objective is an ideal society of perfect unity and selflessness-whether it be the City of God, a Communist heaven on earth, or Hitler's warrior state-the active phase is without an automatic end. ([Location 2040](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2040)) > The principle of a pilot plant, practiced in the large mass-production industries, could thus perhaps be employed in the realization of social progress. ([Location 2061](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2061)) - Note: States as labs of democracies > Madame de Staël said of the Germans over a century ago cannot but realize what ideal material they are for an interminable mass movement: “The Germans,” she said, “are vigorously submissive. ([Location 2069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2069)) > They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear which transforms that respect into admiration.” ([Location 2071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2071)) > But in a traditionally free country the individual who pits himself against coercion does not feel an isolated human atom but one of a mighty race—his rebellious ancestors. ([Location 2077](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2077)) #### Useful Mass Movements > All the true believers of our time—whether Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Japanese or Catholic—declaimed volubly (and the Communists still do) on the decadence of the Western democracies. The burden of their talk is that in the democracies people are too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish to die for a nation, a God or a holy cause. This lack of a readiness to die, we are told, is indicative of an inner rot—a moral and biological decay. The democracies are old, corrupt and decadent. They are no match for the virile congregations of the faithful who are about to inherit the earth. ([Location 2115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2115)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In normal times a democratic nation is an institutionalized association of more or less free individuals. ([Location 2121](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2121)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The measure of a nation’s potential virility is as the reservoir of its longing. The saying of Heraclitus that “it would not be better for mankind if they were given their desires” is true of nations as well as of individuals. ([Location 2131](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2131)) > The gross ideal of an ever-rising standard of living has kept this nation fairly virile. ([Location 2135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2135)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is probably better for a country that when its government begins to show signs of chronic incompetence it should be overthrown by a mighty mass upheaval—even though such overthrow involves a considerable waste of life and wealth—than that it should be allowed to fall and crumble of itself. ([Location 2149](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2149)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The revolutionary effect of the educational work done by Western colonizing powers has already been mentioned. ([Location 2157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2157)) > It was a Judaic-Christian invention. And it is strange to think that in receiving this malady of the soul the world also received a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead—an instrument of resurrection. ([Location 2180](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TO5838&location=2180))