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.
Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.
A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.
Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.
While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you.
Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.
The very people who shudder over the cruelty of the hunter are apt to forget that slaughter, in the grimmest sense of the word, is a process they entrust daily to the butcher; and that unlike the game of the forests, even the dumbest creatures of the slaughterhouse know what is in store for them.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.