John Paxton

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.
This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national, and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat. 2.10.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“We each have a unique way of looking at the world. Our personal world view has been shaped by the things that have happened to us as children and as adults. It has been shaped by the points of view put forward by the people who have influenced us over the years. It has been shaped by our disappointments, our victories and our defeats. Our experience has meant we have developed coping mechanisms that enable us to survive. For me to believe that I can understand you so well that I can even understand your coping mechanisms is arrogant beyond belief.”
― Richard Mullender, Dispelling the Myths and Rediscovering the Lost Art of Listening

“However, the freedom the masses crave is not freedom of self-expression and self-realization, but freedom from the intolerable burden of an autonomous existence. They want freedom from “the fearful burden of free choice,”19 freedom from the arduous responsibility of realizing their ineffectual selves and shouldering the blame for the blemished product. They do not want freedom of conscience, but faith—blind, authoritarian faith. They sweep away the old order not to create a society of free and independent men, but to establish uniformity, individual anonymity and a new structure of perfect unity. It”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“Anyone who is willing to end a relationship because of a reasoned difference of opinion is not worthy of your friendship.”
― Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense