It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Interpretation
Evil can appeal to those who feel powerless by offering them a false sense of strength.
In this quote, Eric Hoffer suggests that individuals who lack power or confidence are often drawn to evil because it provides them with an enticing illusion of control and strength. This attraction to malevolence is rooted in the promise of empowerment, which can lead the weak to align themselves with destructive ideologies or actions in their pursuit of feeling powerful.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the influences of power in politics.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
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.
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
Drink up, boys, drink up and don’t worry, if we finish this bottle we’ll go down and buy another one. Of course, it won’t be the same as the one we’ve got now, but it’ll still be better than nothing. Ah, what a shame they don’t make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time pases, don’t you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.
The nakedness of the indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain.
There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.
You can imagine a soul as being a detailed, elaborate pattern that exists very clearly in one brain. When a person dies, the original is no longer around. But there are other versions of it in other people's brains. It's a less detailed copy, it's coarse-grained.
The angry man wishes the object of his anger to suffer in return; hatred wishes its object not to exist.
I am unable to think of any critical, complex human activity that could be safely reduced to a simple summary equation.
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