Eric Hoffer quotes - page 6

What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping. (Eric Hoffer)
It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power - power to oppress others. View quote
Eric Hoffer
A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. View quote
Eric Hoffer
You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time - not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without. View quote
Eric Hoffer
When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse. View quote
Eric Hoffer
A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action. View quote
Eric Hoffer
To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews, and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Good writing, like gold, combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints. (Eric Hoffer)
Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own... Whether it our own meaningless self we are upholding, or some doctrine devoid of evidence, we can do it only in a frenzy of faith. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat. View quote
Eric Hoffer
There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing - as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. View quote
Eric Hoffer
It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living. View quote
Eric Hoffer
A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual. View quote
Eric Hoffer
No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government. View quote
Eric Hoffer
If in order to keep the wheels turning you have to deafen ears with propaganda, crack the whip of Terror, and keep pushing people around, then you haven't got a machine civilization no matter how numerous and ingenious your machines. View quote
Eric Hoffer
It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals... You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on. View quote
Eric Hoffer
We can never have enough of that which we really do not want, and... we run fastest and farthest from ourselves. (Eric Hoffer)
Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else. View quote
Eric Hoffer
The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. View quote
Eric Hoffer
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt. View quote
Eric Hoffer