Hoffer 2

Here are more quotes from Eric Hoffer. I don't agree with them all, but they reflect more thought then most of us are willing to give to any subject. They continue what I started last week and I know this won't complete the effort, but I doubt that it will be possible for me to publish them weekly. We'll see.

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Communism can reconstruct the chronically poor and launch backward countries on a road to modernization. Capitalism is ideal for enterprising, self-starting people but cannot do much for people who cannot help themselves. Clearly, where communism succeeds it makes the helpless fit for capitalism.

[Hoffer lived through the Second World War and most of the Cold War and had a low opinion of the Soviet Union and its actions. Had he lived to the present he might have developed an antipathy for the capitalism of our times, but we'll never know.]

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As hard as breaking an ingrained habit is the discarding of a reform that is no longer relevant. Our time cries out for child labor – there are no children anymore – but no one dares say it.

[OK. I don't agree with everything he said, but his underlying point, the discarding of a reform that is no longer relevant, makes sense – irrespective of his views on child labor. A regular review of “precedents” would also be in order. They don't always make sense.]

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The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

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It is by their translation into mere words and almost meaningless symbols that ideas move people and stir the to action. The deintellectualization of ideas is the work of pseudo-intellectuals. The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword and blood.

[How often have “saviors” with the sword pretended to have high ideals and unique insights but lacked both?]

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A living faith is basically faith in the future. Hence he who would inspire faith must give the impression that he can peer into the future, and that everything that is happening under his guidance – even when it turns out disastrously – had been foreseen and foretold.

Some of the most successful prophesies of the future were written after the fact, or were based on inside information. Or they were ambiguous and “understood” by those who advanced them in a way that supported their views.]

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The only way to predict the future [correctly and with assurance] is to have power to shape the future. Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophesies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

[A reasonable position, but not always true. Wishing doesn't always make it so. Consider, for example, the failed five-year plans of the Soviet Union.]

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Rudeness seems somehow linked with a rejection of the present. When we reject the present we also reject ourselves – we are, so to speak, rude toward ourselves; and we usually do unto others what we have already done to ourselves.

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There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses. Both the strong and weak grasp at this alibi. The latter hide their malevolence under the virtue of obedience: they acted dishonorably because they had to obey orders. The strong, too, claim absolution by proclaiming themselves the chosen instruments of a higher power – G-d, history, fate, nation or humanity.

[Don't blame me. It ain't my fault.]

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More will come. But I'm not sure when.