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.
A soul, therefore, when deprived of the Word of God, is given up unarmed to the devil for destruction
Men's ideas about what women are have been formed from their ruling caste position, and have assigned women characteristics that would most advantage their masters, as well as justify men's rule over them. They do not represent 'truth' but have been promoted as if they were, with the backing of science and patriarchal views of biology.
Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing...Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation.
The world also remains a hopeful place. Calls for democracy and human rights are being reborn everywhere, and these calls are an expression of support for the values enshrined in the United Nations Charter. They encourage our hopes for a more stable, more peaceful, more prosperous world.
Candor and accountability in a democracy is very important. Hypocrisy has no place.
An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.
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