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Eric Hoffer Quotes - Page 14

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

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.

Thinking, Intellectual, Helping

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

The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth

Effectiveness, Profound, Sublime

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

The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

Art, Revolutionary, Genuine

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

The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves.

Reflection, World, Changing The World

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

We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves.

Inspirational, Self Esteem, Self Respect

"Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer".

The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

Mean, Insatiable Hunger, Majority

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

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.

Reading, Profound, Detectives

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

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

Writing, Lunch, Waiting

Letter to Margaret Anderson, 1941.

Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.

Unawareness, Sensitivity

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

Faith, enthusiasm, and passionate intensity in general are substitutes for the self-confidence born of experience and the possession of skill. Where there is the necessary skill to move mountains there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

Moving, Self Confidence, Skills

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

Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.

Society, Desire, World

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

Literature, Negotiation, Grievance

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

In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

Running, Progress, Society

Eric Hoffer (1963). “The Ordeal of Change”

The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.

Self, Extinction, Matter

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

It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.

Relationship, Money, People

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

We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact

Facts, Opinion, Ready

Notebook entry in 1955. "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell, Harper's Magazine, harpers.org. July 2005.

We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.

Hate, Common, Unified

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

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.

Mean, Power, Men

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

There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

Liberty, Libertarian, Failing

"The Ordeal of Change". Book by Eric Hoffer, 1963.

We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.

Equality, Excellence, Matter

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

Mind, Literature, Chastity

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone

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

The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.

Missing, Creative, Way

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

Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

Children, Savages, Remember

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

Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?

Party, Acceptance, Destiny

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

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