A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes the way powerful intellectuals exploit and dehumanize the general populace.
Eric Hoffer's quote addresses the troubling dynamics between the ruling intelligentsia and the masses they govern. It suggests that those in positions of intellectual and power treat everyday people as mere resources, to be manipulated and discarded without regard for their humanity. This perspective raises important questions about ethics, governance, and the relationship between knowledge and power.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about social justice to highlight the exploitation of marginalized communities.
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.
Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just a stale repetition of outworn memories. You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is yourself left over from yesterday. Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities.
If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times.
The 'free-floating intellectual' may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.
Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.
But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.