Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [541-560] of 1246 Power quotesPower QuotesPower Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self.~ Eric Hoffer Every device employed to bolster individual freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of the absoluteness of power. The indications are that such an impairment is brought about not by strengthening the individual and pitting him against the possessors of power, but by distributing and diversifying power and pitting one category or unit of power against the other. Where power is one, the defeated individual, however strong and resourceful, can have no refuge and no recourse.~ Eric Hoffer Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.~ Eric Hoffer Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.~ Eric Hoffer It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.~ Eric Hoffer I doubt if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and for power -- power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.~ Eric Hoffer It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.~ Eric Hoffer It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power -- power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.~ Eric Hoffer You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.~ Billie Holiday The president of the American Bar Association begins a nationwide tour, giving speeches on the dangers of Treaty Law: 'The doctrine that the treaty power is unlimited and omnipotent and may be used to OVERRIDE the Constitution and the Bill of Rights...is a doctrine of recent origin and largely derived from Missouri v. Holland.'~ Frank E. Holman Society is always engaged in a vast conspiracy to preserve itself -- at the expense of the new demands of each new generation.~ John Haynes Holmes Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered that I was not God.~ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe…that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market… That at any rate is the theory of our constitution.~ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from bondage of irrational fear.~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. There's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We felt, we still feel, the passion of life to it's top. In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire.~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. One of the central assumptions of the concept of democracy, perhaps its most central assumption, is that by and large human beings are better judges of their own interests…. The operating maxim of the democratic ideology is, “Whoever wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.”~ Sidney Hook Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print