read "The Legacy of Eric Hoffer" by Thomas Sowell

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith - faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature 

and in the omnipotence of science.    - from The True Believer

Not all who are poor are frustrated.    - from The True Believer

Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable; when conditions have so improved that 

an ideal state seems almost within reach.     - from The True Believer

Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave 

equality and fraternity more than they do freedom.    - from The True Believer

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. 

For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self.

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks 

and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render 

them more soluble in the collective medium.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life 

and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.

A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

All of the above quotations belong to Eric Hoffer.