It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.
Interpretation
Genuine mass movements can inspire self-sacrifice but may also lead to a loss of moral sense.
In this quote, Eric Hoffer reflects on the complex nature of mass movements, suggesting that while they can galvanize individuals to make significant sacrifices for a cause, such fervor may come at the cost of losing one's moral compass. This phenomenon can both empower individuals to pursue greatness and simultaneously blind them to ethical considerations, highlighting the dual-edged sword of collective movements.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about political movements and their ethical implications.
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.
Thus, those who say they would have right without its correlate, wrong; or good government without its correlate, misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation.
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
God felt, God tasted and enjoyed is indeed God, but God with those gifts which flatter the soul, God in darkness, in privation, in forsakenness, in sensibility, is so much God, that he is so to speak God bare and alone. Shall we fear this death, which is to produce in us the true divine life of grace?
Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are “poor and blank”. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes, the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.
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