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Eric Hoffer Quotes - Page 17

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Both Faith and Terror are instruments for the elimination of individual self-respect. Terror crushes the autonomy of self-respect, where Faith obtains its more or less voluntary surrender. In both cases, the result of

Both Faith and Terror are instruments for the elimination of individual self-respect. Terror crushes the autonomy of self-respect, where Faith obtains its more or less voluntary surrender. In both cases, the result of the elimination of individual autonomy is - automatism. Both Faith and Terror reduce the human entity to a formula that can be manipulated at will.

Crush, Self, Religion

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

Where unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized.

Sacrifice, Self, Unity

Source: www.psychologytoday.com

Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder.

Sight, Answers, Literature

What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?

Reassurance, Weak, Greater

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

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.

Inspirational, Compassion, Soul

Eric Hoffer (1977). “In our time”, McNally & Loftin Publishers

Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.

Israel, Holocaust, Should

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Faith, Cutting, Power

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

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

Future, Facts, Affair

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

A compilation of what outstanding people said or wrote at the age of 20 would make a collection of asinine pronouncements.

People, Age, Youth

Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.

Want, Substitutes, Pursue

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

Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.

Country, Rebellious, Environment

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

Humility, Men, Self

Eric Hoffer (2011). “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”, p.14, Harper Collins

The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow - by the tilt of the social landscape.

Nature, Ambition, Tilt

"The Temper of Our Time". Book by Eric Hoffer, p. 104, 1967.

The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.

Disappointment, Empty Life, Achievement

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

Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.

Echoes, World, Quarrels

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

Give people pride and they'll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction of barter: we surrender our sense of human dignity, our judgement, or moral and aesthetic sense for pride. If there is pride in being free, we are ready to die for liberty. If there is pride to be derived from an identification with a leader, we grovel in the dust before a Napoléon, Hitler or Stalin and are ready to die for him. If there is a distinction in suffering we search for martyrdom as for hidden treasure.

Pride, Self, Dust

It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.

People, Being Positive, Atheism

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

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.

Echoes, Events, Half

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

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

Pain, Writing, People

We can never have enough of that which we really do not want.

Want, Satisfaction, Enough

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

Nature attains perfection, but man never does.

Nature, Men, Perfection

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

True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.

Loyalty, Individual, Believer

Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

Literature, Unpredictability, Monotonous

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

When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die; young and playful.

Greek, Youth, God Love

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

Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.

Thinking, Ideas, People

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