Eric Hoffer quotes - page 12

One would like to see mankind spend the balance of the century in a total effort to clean up and groom the surface of the globe - wipe out the jungles, turn deserts and swamps into arable land, terrace barren mountains, regulate rivers, eradicate all pests, control the weather, and make the whole land mass a fit habitation for Man. The globe should be our and not nature's home, and we no longer nature's guests. (Eric Hoffer)
Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow - by the tilt of the social landscapes. View quote
Eric Hoffer
We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the remarkable fact that many inventions had their birth as toys. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Not only does the intellectual's penchant for tutoring, directing, and regulating promote a regimented social pattern, but his craving for the momentous is bound to foster an austere seriousness inhospitable to the full play of freedom. View quote
Eric Hoffer
This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity. View quote
Eric Hoffer
A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half. View quote
Eric Hoffer
One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind. (Eric Hoffer)
Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own. View quote
Eric Hoffer
We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for. View quote
Eric Hoffer
No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are. View quote
Eric Hoffer
It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. View quote
Eric Hoffer
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. View quote
Eric Hoffer
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty. (Eric Hoffer)
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny. View quote
Eric Hoffer
A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Modern man is weighed down more by the burden of responsibility than by the burden of sin. We think him more a savior who shoulders our responsibilities than him who shoulders our sins. If instead of making decisions we have but to obey and do our duty, we feel it as a sort of salvation. View quote
Eric Hoffer