Hoffer True Believer Quotes

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.

To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.

people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.

Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.

A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.

The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.

Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

Things which are not" are indeed mightier than "things that are". In all ages men have fought most desperately for beautiful cities yet to be built and gardens yet to be planted.

There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

خلافنا مع العالم صدى للخلاف المستمر بداخلنا.

To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.

The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.

If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

كلما استحال على الإنسان أن يدعي التفوق لنفسه، كلما سهل عليه يدّعي التفوق لأمته، أو لدينه أو لعرقه، أو لقضيته المقدسة.

عندما يثور الناس في مجتمع ديكتاتوري، فإنهم لا يثورون على ظلم النظام، بل على ضعفه

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

إن الذين لا يجدون صعوبة فى خداع انفسهم لا يجدون صعوبة فى خداع الاخرين لهم، ومن ثم فمن السهل اقناعهم وقيادتهم

يعاني أتباع الأديان السامية شعورا بالذنب عندما تتسع الهوة بين تعاليم دينهم وواقعهم المليء بالمعاصي، وعندما يدخل التطرف الصورة فإن الشعور بالذنب يتحول إلى كراهية سافرة، وهكذا نجد كل ما ازداد التطرف عند أتباع مذهب ما - مهما كان هذا المذهب ساميا - كلما نما لديهم شعورا بالكراهية

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements.

The enemy—the indispensible devil of every mass movement—is omnipresent. He plots both outside and inside the ranks of the faithful. It is his voice that speaks through the mouth of the dissenter, and the deviationists are his stooges. If anything goes wrong within the movement, it is his doing. It is the sacred duty of the true believer to be suspicious. He must be constantly on the lookout for saboteurs, spies and traitors.

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.

إن المساواة بلا حرية تخلق نظامًا إجتماعيًا أكثر إستقرارًا من الحرية بلا مساواة

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.

Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience... The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending -- for making a show -- and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America

Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

لا شيء يعزّز ثقتنا بالنفس ويساعدنا على العيش معها كالقدرة المستمرة على الإبداع: أن نرى الأشياء تنمو وتكبر بين أيدينا يوماً بعد يوم. وليس من المستبعد أن يكون اختفاء الحرف اليدوية في الأوقات المعاصرة سبباً في تزايد الإحباط وفي انجذاب الفرد إلى الحركات الجماهيرية.

If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident.

A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

إن اليأس الذي تسببه البطالة لا ينبع من خوف الفقر فحسب ، وإنما من مواجهة مستقبل من الفراغ. والعاطلون ينزعون إلى اتباع الذين يبيعونهم الأمل قبل اتباع الذين يقدمون لهم العون

The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.

An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only as barren and helpless but also as vile. To confess and repent is to slough off one’s individual distinctness and separateness, and salvation is found by losing oneself in the holy oneness of the congregation.

إن الإيمان بقضية مقدسة هو -إلى درجة كبيرة- محاولة للتعويض عن الإيمان الذي فقدناه بأنفسنا.

لن نشعر أن لدينا شيئاً نستحق العيش من أجله ما لم نكن مستعدين للموت في سبيله.

إن إحباطنا عندما نملك الكثير ونريد المزيد يفوق إحباطنا عندما لا نملك شيئاً ونريد القليل. نحن أقل تذمراً حين نفقد أشياءاً كثيرة منا، حين لا نفقد إلا شيئاً واحداً.

The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole -- the church, party, nation -- and not to his fellow true believer.

To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.

إن قبو التعذيب مؤسسة جماعية/اجتماعية

The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.

Action is a unifier.

Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo.

In modern times, nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated.

When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope.

If anything ail a man,” says Thoreau, “so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming—the world.”3

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.

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

لن نشعر أن لدينا شيئًا نستحق العيش من أجله مادمنا لم نكن مستعدين للموت في سبيله

العاطلون ينزعون إلى اتباع الذين يبيعونهم الأمل قبل اتباع الذين يقدمون لهم العون.

The decline of handicrafts in modern times is perhaps one of the causes for the rise of frustration

though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious.

إن إحباطنا عندما نملك الكثير, ونريد المزيد يفوق إحباطنا عندما لا نملك شيئًا ونريد القليل. ونحن أقل تذمرًا حين نفقد أشياء كثيرة منا, حين لا نفقد إلا شيئًا واحدًا.

For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and the potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.

The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish.

Unless a man has the 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?

Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others.12 No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority. They

Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience—the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or “of those who are to be.” We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds, in the opinion and imagination of others.

The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice.

والملل هو الذي فسر لنا ظواهر أخرى: كثرة العوانس والسيدات اللواتي تجاوزن منتصف العمر في بدايات الحركات الجماهيرية. حتى عندما نكون بصدد حركة لا ترحب بعمل المرأة خارج المنزل ، كانازية مثلا ، نجد نساء يؤدين دورا كبيرا في نشأة الحركة. هناك شبه من نوع ما ، بين إنضمام المرأة إلى زوج وإنضمامها إلى حركة جماهيرية ففي كلتا الحالتين هنالك هدف جديد وهوية جديدة -اسم جديد-. إن الملل الذي تشعر به العوانس والنساء اللواتي لم يعد بوسعهن العثور على السعادة والرضا في زواج ناتج أساسا عن ضيقهن بحياة عقيمة فاشلة. وعندما يعتنق هؤلاء النسوة قضية مقدسة يسخرنلها وجودهن كله وطاقتهم كلها ، فإنهن يجدن حياة جديدة مليئة بالمعنى والهدف!!! ص100

Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us

إننا عندما نهرب من أنفسنا نلقي بثقلنا على عاتق جارنا، أو نطبق على عنقه.

in modern times nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm,

To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him. 71

I can do no better than quote Montaigne: “All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.

A man is likely to mind his own business, when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his ownmeaningless affairs and by minding other people’s business.

ينزع الرجل إلى الاهتمام بشؤونه الخاصة عندما تكون جديرة بالاهتمام. أما عندما لا تكون لديه شؤون خاصة حقيقية, فإنه ينزع إلى نسيان شؤونه التي فقدت معناها والاهتمام بشؤون الآخرين الخاصة. يعبر هذا الاهتمام عن نفسه بالغيبة والتجسس والفضول, كما أنه يتجه إلى اهتمام غير طبيعي بالشؤون المجتمعية والقومية والعرقية. إننا عندما نهرب من أنفسنا نلقي بثقلنا على عاتق جارنا, أو نطبق على عنقه.

The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man’s reason and the boundless range of his intelligence. Never, says de Tocqueville, had humanity been prouder of itself nor had it ever so much faith in its own omnipotence.

The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death.

They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually their innermost desire is for an end to the “free for all.” They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society. 29

On the other hand, there is no more potent dwarfing of the present than by viewing it as a mere link between a glorious past and a glorious future. Thus, though a mass movement at first turns its back on the past, it eventually develops a vivid awareness, often specious, of a distant glorious past. Religious movements go back to the day of creation; social revolutions tell of a golden age when men were free, equal, and independent; nationalist movements revive or invent memories of past greatness.

إن الآراء الفجة التي قد تصدر عن عدد من قادة الحركات الجماهيرية والعصرية قد تدفع المرء إلى الاعتقاد بأن قدرًا من السذاجة ينفع القائد، إن هذه الملاحظة غير صحيحة. لم تكن سذاجة هتلر أو آمي ميكفرسون هي التي مكّنتهما من اجتذاب الأتباع؛ كان السبب الثقة المطلقة في النفس؛ هذه الثقة التي تُمكّن القائد من عرض أفكاره، مهما كانت مشوشة أو سطحية، بكل جرأة وإعتداد، ويمكن للقائد الحكيم الذي يتبع مسار حكمته إلى النهاية أن يحقق قدرًا مماثلًا من النجاح. الأفكار في حد ذاتها لا تلعب سوى دورًا صغيرًا في قيادة الحركة الجماهيرية، ما يهم هو المبادرات الجريئة والقدرة على تجاهل آراء الآخرين، وعلى تحدي العالم بأسره.

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

One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors that promote self-sacrifice is that we are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have “something worth fighting for,” they do not feel like fighting. People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause.

It is perhaps true that the criminal who embraces a holy cause is more ready to risk his life and go to extremes in its defense than people who are awed by the sanctity of life and property.

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.

There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.

It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated. Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins.

Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.

Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth. It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. […] The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds. […] If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine. When some part of a doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it.

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. 11

There is perhaps some hope to be derived from the fact that in most instances where an attempt to realize an ideal society gave birth to the ugliness and violence of a prolonged active mass movement the experiment was made on a vast scale and with a heterogeneous population. Such was the case in the rise of Christianity and Islam, and in the French, Russian and Nazi revolutions. The promising communal settlements in the small state of Israel and the successful programs of socialization in the small Scandinavian states indicate perhaps that when the attempt to realize an ideal society is undertaken by a small nation with a more or less homogeneous population it can proceed and succeed in an atmosphere which is neither hectic nor coercive.

Nature of the Desire for Change: There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on. “If anything ail a man,” says Thoreau, “so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming—the world.” It is understandable that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failure. The remarkable thing is that the successful, too, however much they pride themselves on their foresight, fortitude, thrift and other “sterling qualities,” are at bottom convinced that their success is the result of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. The self-confidence of even the consistently successful is never absolute. They are never sure that they know all the ingredients which go into the making of their success. The outside world seems to them a precariously balanced mechanism, and so long as it ticks in their favor they are afraid to tinker with it. Thus the resistance to change and the ardent desire for it spring from the same conviction, and the one can be as vehement as the other.

من أين تأتي هذه الكراهية الغير منطقية و لماذا تتحول إلي عامل توحيد؟ إنها تعبير عن محاولة يائسة من جانبنا لإخفاء شعورنا بالنقص, أو بقلة أهميتنا, أو بالذنب, أو بأي عيوب أخري تنبع من داخلنا, يتحول احتقار النفس هنا لكراهية الآخرين, مع محاولة مستميتة لإخفاء هذا التحول. حتي عندما يكون هناك ظلم, فإن كراهيتنا لا تنبع منه بقدر ما تنبع من إحساسنا بالفشل و العجز و الجبن, بعبارة أخري من احتقارنا انفسنا. عندما نشعر بالتفوق علي أعدائنا فإننا نعاملهم باحتقار و ربما بشئ من الشفقة لكننا لا نكرههم. تتضح لنا الحقيقة التي تقول : إن الكراهية تنبع من احتقار النفس أكثر مما تنبع من الظلم عندما نتفحص العلاقة الحميمة بين الكراهية و تأنيب الضمير.

To understand why I jumped from the Mormon wagon train requires an understanding of what Mormons are and how they think. While Mormons have some quaint, quirky and fanatical ideas, they really aren't much different from millions of poor, guilt-ridden souls who, throughout the march of human history, have hitched their hopes to mass movements of one sort or another. Eric Hoffer, in his brilliant treatise, "The True Believer," explains the attraction of joining a cause: "A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following 'by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated by freeing them from their ineffectual selves--and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole'. "Of all the cults and philosophies that competed in the Graeco-Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization." Once I realized this, it wasn't much of a leap out of religion altogether once I flew the Mormon coop. I simply wanted to be free from organizational groupthink. I escaped from the stuffy attic of religion's "pray, pay and obey" mentality into journalism's open laboratory of "who, what, where, when and why.

All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance. All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all appeal to the same types of mind. Though there are obvious differences between the fanatical Christian, the fanatical Mohammedan, the fanatical nationalist, the fanatical Communist and the fanatical Nazi, it is yet true that the fanaticism which animates them may be viewed and treated as one. The same is true of the force which drives them on to expansion and world dominion. There is a certain uniformity in all types of dedication, of faith, of pursuit of power, of unity and of self-sacrifice. There are vast differences in the contents of holy causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in the factors which make them effective. He who, like Pascal, finds precise reasons for the effectiveness of Christian doctrine has also found the reasons for the effectiveness of Communist, Nazi and nationalist doctrine. However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.

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 is not the wickedness of the old regime they rise against but its weakness; not its oppression, but its failure to hammer them together into one solid, mighty whole.

A feeling of superiority counteracts imitation. Had the millions of immigrants who came to this country been superior people—the cream of the countries they came from—there would have been not one U.S.A. but a mosaic of lingual and cultural groups. It was due to the fact that the majority of the immigrants were of the lowest and the poorest, the despised and the rejected, that the heterogeneous millions blended so rapidly and thoroughly. They came here with the ardent desire to shed their old world identity and be reborn to a new life; and they were automatically equipped with an unbounded capacity to imitate and adopt the new. The strangeness of the new country attracted rather than repelled them. They craved a new identity and a new life—and the stranger the new world the more it suited their inclination.

The boredom of spinsters and of women who can no longer find joy and fulfillment in marriage stems from an awareness of a barren, spoiled life. By embracing a holy cause and dedicating their energies and substance to its advancement, they find a new life full of purpose and meaning. Hitler made full use of “the society ladies thirsting for adventure, sick of their empty lives, no longer getting a ‘kick’ out of love affairs.”1 He was financed by the wives of some of the great industrialists long before their husbands had heard of him.2 Miriam Beard tells of a similar role played by bored wives of businessmen before the French Revolution: “they were devastated with boredom and given to fits of the vapors. Restlessly, they applauded innovators.