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Eric Hoffer Quotes - Page 13

All Quotes Acceptance Achievement Age Ambition Anxiety Art Atheism Atheist Attitude Awareness Balance Belief Business Change Character Children Communism Compassion Conformity Conservatism Country Creativity Death Deception Dedication Desire Destiny Devil Diversity Doubt Dying Education Effort Energy Environment Envy Equality Evil Excellence Experience Failure Faith Fashion Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Freedom Frustration Future Generosity Giving Glory Growing Up Growth Happiness Hate Hatred Heart History Home Hope Humanity Humility Hunger Ignorance Impulse Independence Individuality Inspirational Integrity Judging Justice Kindness Knowledge Language Laughter Leadership Learning Liberty Life Literature Loneliness Love Loyalty Lying Manifestation Motivational Nature Opportunity Originality Overcoming Passion Past Philosophy Power Prejudice Pride Propaganda Prophet Protest Purpose Quality Reality Reflection Rejection Religion Resentment Respect Responsibility Righteousness Running Sacrifice Sadness Self Confidence Self Esteem Self Respect Sin Society Soul Spring Success Suffering Talent Teaching Technology Time Tolerance Truth Unity Vision Water Weakness Winning Wisdom Work Writing Youth

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

Being Yourself, Being Single, Men

Eric Hoffer (1955). “The passionate state of mind, and other aphorisms”

Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.

Religion, Vicious, Ruthless

Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

Action can give us the feeling of being useful, but only words can give us a sense of weight and purpose.

Giving, Feelings, Purpose

Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

Selfish, Passion, Exercise

Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.

Life And Death, Realization, Flow

Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.

Accomplished, Ask Me, Sentences

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest. A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness.

People, Giving, Originality

'Passionate State of Mind' (1955) p. 21

To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.

Serious, Originality, Underestimate

"Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.

Sports, Art, Literature

"Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely'". www.nytimes.com. April 25, 1971.

For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.

Opposites, Age, World

Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.

Time, Youth, Talent

Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

Creativity is discontent translated into arts.

Inspirational, Art, Creativity

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

Success, Opportunity, Men

Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

Compassion, Soul, Impulse

Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

Thinking, Literature, Way

"The Temper of Our Time". Book by Eric Hoffer, 1967.

Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.

Ideas, Action, Prelude

Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

Winning, Europe, People

Eric Hoffer (2011). “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”, p.9, Harper Collins

The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.

Men, Survival, Kind

One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.

Technology, Men, Medicine

"Reflections on the Human Condition". Book by Eric Hoffer, Section 60, 1973.

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

Numbers, Soul, Weakness

Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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.

Devil, Subconscious, Cunning

Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.

Thinking, Exaggeration Is, Literature

Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

Simple, Society

Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind -- the mind of a fighter -- in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man's first beginning.

Fashion, New Beginnings, Simple

Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out.

Self Confidence, Hands, Ability

Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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