This weekend, a good friend (Thanks, Eddie!) reminded me to read a “classic” on mass movements, The True Believer (1951), by Eric Hoffer, an American social writer.  Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan.

Hoffer begins his book by recognizing that all mass movements have much in common:

This book deals with some peculiarities common to all mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements. It does not maintain that all movements are data call, but that they share certain essential care to restrict which give them a family likeness.

There is more to the similarities, according to Hoffer. All mass movements “demand blind faith and single hearted allegiance.” Although they differ in their doctrines, they all “draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all appeal to the same types of mind.”  Hoffer speaks of the art of “religiofication, the art of turning practical purposes into holy causes.” (15)

Last night, I took a couple hours to read through The True Believer. I want to take this time to share a few quotes from Hoffer’s book:

There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. (16)

Discontent by itself does not invariably create a desire for change. Other factors have to be present before discontent turns into disaffection. One of these is a sense of power. (17)

The differences between the conservatives and the …