FastSaying

The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients.


Eric Hoffer

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducin...
GIACOMO CASANOVA I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducin...
GIOVANNI JACOPO CASANOVA I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducin...
GIACOMO CASANOVA Education should prepare our minds to use its own powers of reason and conception rather than fillin...
BRYANT H. MCGILL It is a tragedy that many of God’s people have conformed themselves to the world and its thinking,...
BILLY GRAHAM Why are you suggesting something… then deny to tell the whole thing?
DEYTH BANGER Sometimes shit's gotta be done and I just fuckin' do it!
MANUEL MONGRAIN Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
ERIC HOFFER Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be...
EDMUND BURKE Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the e...
SOCRATES The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.
WILLIAM H. MURRAY A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.
WILLIAM MURRAY A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.
WILLIAM MURRAY Convinced that the attachment of colonies to the metropolis, depends infinitely more upon moral and ...
JOHN STRACHAN They say I can open movies, and that's nice in that it puts into people's minds that women c...
JULIA ROBERTS Its our eyes and minds that allow to see difference, but its our humanity that truly allows us to se...
NOLAN BANKS Instead of having just good intentions that are me-centered,you can have God intentions that are God...
CRAIG GROESCHEL Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put f...
DAVID CRYSTAL They say I can open movies, and that's nice in that it puts into people's minds that women can do it...
JULIA ROBERTS The best kind of mind is that which minds its own business.
VIKRANT PARSAI For its health, cricket needs to look outward to the sharpest minds, to people who sustain and nurtu...
HARSHA BHOGLE 6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break:

1. Stop stressing
2. Stop worrying
3. Give re...
GERMANY KENT Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It i...
FRANCIS THOMPSON Able writers let us into their minds and show us how they think and by that open our minds to oursel...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Love has its own time, its own season, and its own reasons from coming and going. You cannot bribe i...
KENT NERBURN It is a struggle for the minds of the people... No cause justifies recourse to terrorism.
MANMOHAN SINGH Some people have facts; these can be proven. Some people have theories; these can be disproven. But ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Our minds do unusual things sometimes, Tamara. When we’re looking for things it takes it upon itse...
CECELIA AHERN The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by...
JEFF COOPER Love... Force it and it disappears. You cannot will love, nor even control it. You can only guide it...
DAVID SEABURY A dose of poison can do its work only once, but a bad book can go on poisoning people's minds for an...
JOHN MURRAY Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its name - w...
EDWARD KENNEDY There is the greatest difference between assuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportu...
JOHN STUART MILL Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in fin...
F.A. HAYEK Every new writing project, every new artistic project, needs to be protected so it can grow on its o...
EDWARD CAREY 37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married.
JAMES C. DOBSON lies, truth, loveI have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a ...
GIACOMO CASANOVA I know I want and do not have what I want. A weight hangs suspended from a hook; being suspended, it...
CARLO MICHELSTAEDTER Any religion-based state has a mission to limit the minds of its people, to fight the developments o...
RAIF BADAWI I think we thought the community needs something to lift its spirits. The kids need normalcy and may...
WENDI MILLS Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise ...
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it
SARA SHEPARD The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be transla...
TWYLA THARP Nothing alive can stand still, it goes forward or back. Life is interesting only as long as it is a ...
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT Some people are reluctant to consider the future, arguing that it must be left to solve its own prob...
JOHN OXENHAM If you can dream it, you can do it.
ENZO FERRARI Do the thing and you will have the power.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to...
AYN RAND One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows. Men ha...
HERACLITUS And it seems to have hit a chord in the hearts and minds of people who see it, who feel that it has ...
BOBBY MORESCO I had to agree with one ex-boyfriend of one crackhead complainant who'd gone missing, when he told m...
EDWARD CONLON It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own hori...
ALEXANDRE DUMAS No religion with a universal message . . . under one flag can even momentarily entertain the idea of...
MIRZA TAHIR AHMAD When they pressure management to defend itself, it creates greater accountability. It forces managem...
CHARLES ELSON Its not about where you begin, but rather where your minds potential begins...
SHANE J VAN DER VELDE The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is ...
SAMUEL BUTLER Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the...
J.K. ROWLING Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under the cover of fiction without th...
C.S. LEWIS The surest way to lose truth is to pretend that one already wholly possesses it.
GORDON W. ALLPORT Fiction has subversive potential. People let it into their minds, like the Trojan Horse. They don...
RANDY ALCORN I think when people see Pluto revealed by New Horizons, its satellite system, its complex surface, i...
ALAN STERN I think people have a strong desire to push me and others into some sort of political box that they ...
ADAM CAROLLA It seems people are more willing to let other people control their minds now and recreational drug u...
MARC MARON When We have Patience in our minds and Love in our hearts, Nothing appears to be impossible or unrea...
PHILIP T.M There is something uncannily adaptive about anti-Semitism: the way it can hide, unsuspected, in the ...
JAMES LASDUN Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and...
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN The pure natural scientist is liable to forget that minds exist, and that if it were not for them he...
CHARLES D. BROAD However, once technology enables us to re-engineer human minds, Homo sapiens will disappear, human h...
YUVAL NOAH HARARI Neither can such a doctrine argue: it simply does not understand that other doctrines exist, can exi...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Science is a method, not a religion, yet it can be just as close-minded. Open minds here Claire. Alw...
RACHEL CAINE Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It i...
FRANCIS THOMPSON We cannot legislate good judgment into the minds and hearts and souls of pilots, but we can erect so...
JAMES OBERSTAR The painting showed a hairless, oppressed creature with a head like an inverted pear, its hands clap...
PHILIP K. DICK I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abys...
MARCEL PROUST You release the pain of the past and press on. It's a new day, and God is doing a new thing. He want...
CRAIG GROESCHEL I certainly wish it would make its mind up. That would help us figure how to make our minds up.
DAN BUCKNER Sky is proud of its bright stars; earth is proud of its bright minds!
MEHMET MURAT ILDAN Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds.
ARUNDHATI ROY You are an adult and you don't understand me and what are the differences between the adult and the ...
DEYTH BANGER It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what was in their min...
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their mind...
MARY SHELLEY We always want to have a new single on the radio, so we'll just keep hashing them out, ... We're rel...
BRETT SCALLIONS Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projecti...
SUN TZU Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future...
W.H. AUDEN My favorite novel is 'To Kill a Mockingbird' because of its broad sweep, its tackling of big...
RIDLEY PEARSON It's time to bring a change because the world is changing. Let's open our minds and live in ...
QANDEEL BALOCH What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.
HERBERT A. SIMON The U.S. will ignore the opinion of the Iraqi people and it will compose the new government accordin...
MUQTADA AL SADR We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality...
CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS Using assistive technology with your child prevents your child from missing out on content solely be...
SANDRA K. COOK Although I cannot see your face
As you flip these poems awhile,
Somewhere from some far-of...
SHEL SILVERSTEIN The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of ...
JOHN BERGER The girls are excited to play, and on any given day, anything can happen. The girls have a goal set ...
OSAMA HAMID To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its...
ISADORA DUNCAN The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its...
ISADORA DUNCAN If you can say it... it's obvious.
DEYTH BANGER God help us from those who believe that they are the sole possessors of truth. How we manage at time...
HUSSEIN OF JORDAN

More Eric Hoffer

Children are the keys of paradise.
ERIC HOFFER It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
ERIC HOFFER Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and ...
ERIC HOFFER The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
ERIC HOFFER It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to le...
ERIC HOFFER Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us...
ERIC HOFFER Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
ERIC HOFFER We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
ERIC HOFFER The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flowby t...
ERIC HOFFER The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When t...
ERIC HOFFER How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!
ERIC HOFFER There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for...
ERIC HOFFER It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.
ERIC HOFFER A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a sym...
ERIC HOFFER There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
ERIC HOFFER Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in ...
ERIC HOFFER The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger ...
ERIC HOFFER It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer f...
ERIC HOFFER The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
ERIC HOFFER Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to...
ERIC HOFFER The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

ERIC HOFFER Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
ERIC HOFFER One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of...
ERIC HOFFER The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in w...
ERIC HOFFER Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
ERIC HOFFER The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their ...
ERIC HOFFER The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as ...
ERIC HOFFER Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in l...
ERIC HOFFER Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for se...
ERIC HOFFER Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions ...
ERIC HOFFER The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither ac...
ERIC HOFFER When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common...
ERIC HOFFER Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring...
ERIC HOFFER Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. For we can...
ERIC HOFFER Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would i...
ERIC HOFFER To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain e...
ERIC HOFFER Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
ERIC HOFFER It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposi...
ERIC HOFFER There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmar...
ERIC HOFFER The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.
ERIC HOFFER It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
ERIC HOFFER It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
ERIC HOFFER It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create someth...
ERIC HOFFER The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist...
ERIC HOFFER It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and presen...
ERIC HOFFER Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stu...
ERIC HOFFER An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anyth...
ERIC HOFFER Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
ERIC HOFFER No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need p...
ERIC HOFFER The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of t...
ERIC HOFFER In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find them...
ERIC HOFFER It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
ERIC HOFFER Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
ERIC HOFFER The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things o...
ERIC HOFFER The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim a...
ERIC HOFFER We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
ERIC HOFFER Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and...
ERIC HOFFER Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about o...
ERIC HOFFER The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine h...
ERIC HOFFER A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
ERIC HOFFER There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the pre...
ERIC HOFFER The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword an...
ERIC HOFFER We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every...
ERIC HOFFER A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-...
ERIC HOFFER To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
ERIC HOFFER We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we hav...
ERIC HOFFER To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
ERIC HOFFER The well adjusted make poor prophets. A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic...
ERIC HOFFER Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
ERIC HOFFER The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil ...
ERIC HOFFER Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
ERIC HOFFER Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but...
ERIC HOFFER We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
ERIC HOFFER They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspi...
ERIC HOFFER There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his ow...
ERIC HOFFER Facts are counterrevolutionary.
ERIC HOFFER It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opini...
ERIC HOFFER A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
ERIC HOFFER Man was nature's mistake --she neglected to finish him -- and she has never ceased paying for her mi...
ERIC HOFFER The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in th...
ERIC HOFFER It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
ERIC HOFFER You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
ERIC HOFFER Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, ...
ERIC HOFFER The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind...
ERIC HOFFER To the old, the new is usually bad news.
ERIC HOFFER The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
ERIC HOFFER There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.
ERIC HOFFER Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the...
ERIC HOFFER To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as h...
ERIC HOFFER The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to ...
ERIC HOFFER There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.
ERIC HOFFER The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altoge...
ERIC HOFFER Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
ERIC HOFFER Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses ...
ERIC HOFFER We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are ...
ERIC HOFFER Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-eviden...
ERIC HOFFER The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the b...
ERIC HOFFER The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do un...
ERIC HOFFER Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like ...
ERIC HOFFER Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing...
ERIC HOFFER Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
ERIC HOFFER What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
ERIC HOFFER Intolerance is the Do Not Touch sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having o...
ERIC HOFFER It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is ...
ERIC HOFFER It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer fr...
ERIC HOFFER A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominate...
ERIC HOFFER There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a jo...
ERIC HOFFER It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and ...
ERIC HOFFER Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the...
ERIC HOFFER The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious vic...
ERIC HOFFER Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not or...
ERIC HOFFER It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigran...
ERIC HOFFER When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
ERIC HOFFER More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers...
ERIC HOFFER The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the ...
ERIC HOFFER When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.
ERIC HOFFER The beginning of thought is in disagreement -- not only with others but also with ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission an...
ERIC HOFFER The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
ERIC HOFFER Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of a...
ERIC HOFFER We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and con...
ERIC HOFFER A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
ERIC HOFFER There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being hi...
ERIC HOFFER All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action...
ERIC HOFFER We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
ERIC HOFFER Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers a...
ERIC HOFFER There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
ERIC HOFFER Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the t...
ERIC HOFFER Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The ...
ERIC HOFFER Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossibl...
ERIC HOFFER The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wis...
ERIC HOFFER We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: chan...
ERIC HOFFER When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and th...
ERIC HOFFER We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the ...
ERIC HOFFER Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions m...
ERIC HOFFER We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meani...
ERIC HOFFER The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a ...
ERIC HOFFER Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And w...
ERIC HOFFER To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of...
ERIC HOFFER Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
ERIC HOFFER The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
ERIC HOFFER It is easier to love humanity than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem e...
ERIC HOFFER Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.
ERIC HOFFER Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that ...
ERIC HOFFER We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire cr...
ERIC HOFFER Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want ...
ERIC HOFFER Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to ...
ERIC HOFFER With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the ...
ERIC HOFFER A man by himself is in bad company.
ERIC HOFFER Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the p...
ERIC HOFFER Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
ERIC HOFFER It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
ERIC HOFFER We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
ERIC HOFFER We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many i...
ERIC HOFFER A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prom...
ERIC HOFFER The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares no...
ERIC HOFFER The nature of society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow-by th...
ERIC HOFFER It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
ERIC HOFFER There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a...
ERIC HOFFER Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
ERIC HOFFER Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possib...
ERIC HOFFER Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling o...
ERIC HOFFER Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
ERIC HOFFER People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
ERIC HOFFER Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of m...
ERIC HOFFER It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
ERIC HOFFER In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equippe...
ERIC HOFFER The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitaria...
ERIC HOFFER Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength
ERIC HOFFER The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by d...
ERIC HOFFER The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
ERIC HOFFER It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.
ERIC HOFFER One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of...
ERIC HOFFER There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were,...
ERIC HOFFER Our great weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opi...
ERIC HOFFER There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it
ERIC HOFFER It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
ERIC HOFFER To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
ERIC HOFFER The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the ...
ERIC HOFFER The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of thr majority in th...
ERIC HOFFER Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that ...
ERIC HOFFER You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, ...
ERIC HOFFER Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And w...
ERIC HOFFER Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragemen...
ERIC HOFFER The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in w...
ERIC HOFFER To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has hap...
ERIC HOFFER It is easier to love humanity as a whole that to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we r...
ERIC HOFFER One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ...
ERIC HOFFER Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
ERIC HOFFER