Bobby

“The radical and the reactionary loathe the present. They see it as an aberration and a deformity. Both are ready to proceed ruthlessly and recklessly with the present, and both are hospitable to the idea of self-sacrifice.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“On the other hand, those who reject the present and fix their eyes and hearts on things to come have a faculty for detecting the embryo of future danger or advantage in the ripeness of their times.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“Misery does not automatically generate discontent, nor is the intensity of discontent directly proportionate to the degree of misery. [...] A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed. […] 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.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements