Eric Hoffer Quotes

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Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
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.
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.
Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.
The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant. In an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self.
A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.
It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
"It is not at all simple to understand the simple."
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them."
"The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind."
"It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs."
"We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to attain excellence. To discover what a man truly craves but knows he cannot have we must find the field in which he advocates absolute equality. By this test Communists are frustrated Capitalists."
"Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves."
"In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued."
"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."
"Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self."
"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."
"It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for," they do not feel like fighting."
"It is not actual suffering but a taste of better things which excites people to revolt."
"Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing."
"Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing."
"The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure."
A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves."
"The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity."
"The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. 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."
"Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep."
"Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay."
"The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations."
"To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition."
"We cannot hate those who we despise."
"The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto."
"The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche."
"We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves."
"How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization."
"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to an empty head."
"The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others."
"What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds."
"Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world."
"Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions."
"The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor."
"A man by himself is in bad company."
"The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance."
"Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us."
"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."
"The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness."
"When we leave people on their own, we are delivering them into the hands of a ruthless taskmaster from whose bondage there is no escape. The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself."
"To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible."

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.

We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.

Eric Hoffer Quotes

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