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EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-02935-5

First Perennial Library edition published 1966. Reset 1989.

First Perennial Classics edition published 2002. Perennial Classics are published by Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hoffer, Eric.

The true believer / Eric Hoffer—1st Perennial classics ed.

p. cm.—(Perennial classics)

Originally published: New York: Harper & Row, 1951.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-06-050591-5

1. Social groups. 2. Social psychology. 3. Fanaticism. 4. Social participation. I. Title. II. Perennial classic.

HM716 .H63 2002

303.48'4—dc21 2002072255

09 RRD 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23

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Notes

Preface

1. The word “frustrated” is not used in this book as a clinical term. It denotes here people who, for one reason or another, feel that their lives are spoiled or wasted.

PART 1

Chapter I

1. E. H. Carr, Nationalism and After (New York: Macmillan Company, 1945), p. 20.

2. See end of Section 104.

3. Henry David Thoreau, Waiden, Modern Library edition (New York: Random House, 1937), p. 69.

4. Alexis de Tocqueville, On the State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 (London: John Murray, 1888), pp. 198–199.

5. Genesis 11:4, 6.

6. See Section 58.

7. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1944), p. 35.

8. Ibid., p. 40.

Chapter II

1. Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943), p. 105.

2. Hermann Rauschning, The Conservative Revolution (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), p. 189.

3. Thomas Gray, Letters, Vol. I, p. 137. Quoted by Gamaliel Bradford, Bare Souls (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924), p. 71.

Chapter III

1. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), p. 13.

2. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), p. 134.

3. Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944), p. 30.

4. Fritz August Voigt, Unto Caesar (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938), p. 283.

5. Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932), p. 155.

6. A. Mathiez, “Les Origins des Cultes Revolutionnaires,” p. 31. Quoted by Carlton J. H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (New York: Macmillan Company, 1926), p. 103.

7. Frantz Funck-Brentano, Luther (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1939), p. 278.

8. H. G. Wells, The Outline of History (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), pp. 482–484.

PART 2

Chapter IV

1. A mild instance of the combined shaping by the best and worst is to be observed in the case of language. The respectable middle section of a nation sticks to the dictionary. Innovations come from the best—statesmen, poets, writers, scientists, specialists—and from the worst—slang makers.

Chapter V

1. Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan Company, 1939), Vol. 1, p. 24.

2. Angelica Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938),