“Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.”
Section 26
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts
Context: Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom." It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?
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Eric Hoffer240
American philosopher 1898–1983Related quotes
“Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses
Chap. VII: Noble Life And Common Life, Or Effort And Inertia
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)
Context: The mass-man would never have accepted authority external to himself had not his surroundings violently forced him to do so. As to-day, his surroundings do not so force him, the everlasting mass-man, true to his character, ceases to appeal to other authority and feels himself lord of his own existence. On the contrary the select man, the excellent man is urged, by interior necessity, to appeal from himself to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself, whose service he freely accepts.… Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline — the noble life.
Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer
“Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) German philosopher
As quoted in Forbes Vol. 78 (1956), and in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 275
Context: Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.
Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist
Max Stirner (1806–1856) German philosopher
Attributed in Forbes Vol 38 Iss. 2 (1936) p. 18, and in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 275
Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) French writer
Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. 42
“Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!”
Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) Poet and historian
To the Countess of Cumberland. Stanza 12, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).