“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.”

Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer - “The enemy—the indispensible devil of...” 1

Similar quotes

“What was the constant?Movement. Yes. With time there was always movement. The setting sun. The dripping water. Thependulums. The spilling sand. To realize his destiny, such movement had to cease. He had to stop the flowof time completely …”

Mitch Albom
Read more

“He wanted to believe that his own lack of movement had stopped all movement in the world, the way a hibernating frog abolishes winter.”

Kobo Abe
Read more

“He was so close she could almost hear the movement of his thoughts, the role of the tide; she had slipped inside his skin.”

Tess Callahan
Read more

“The infinite space that each man carries within himself, wherein despairingly he contrasts the movement of his spirit with the acts of his life, is and overpowering thing.”

Victor Hugo
Read more

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”

Taylor Caldwell
Read more