FastSaying

A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.


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

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
ERIC HOFFER Dignity means that an individual feels self-respect and self-worth.
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA The poem, to me (until I go broke) is an attempt, an experiment, a failing experiment, toward assert...
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS Fashion in the past meant conforming and losing oneself. Fashion in the present means being individu...
GLORIA STEINEM Social justice is a cancer. Social justice means you are ruled by whatever the mob does. What social...
RAFAEL CRUZ Perhaps your challenge isn't finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in t...
SETH GODIN A lie is a simple self-defense technique which step by step becomes an unavoidable self-destruction ...
KAGABO BURANGA JACQUES Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather...
LEWIS H. LAPHAM In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and ...
JAMES MARK BALDWIN Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already d...
JAMES ROBINSON Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already d...
JAMES H. ROBINSON Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already d...
JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON A presumption becomes a self-refuting assertion".

~R. Alan Woods [2012]
R. ALAN WOODS Valor consists in the power of self recovery.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON Courage consists in the power of self-recovery.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves...
MAHATMA GANDHI Seeking means to have a goal; but finding means to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O...
HERMANN HESSE Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You,...
HERMANN HESSE The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going that way.
HENRY WARD BEECHER Empowering the individual means empowering the nation. And empowerment is best served through rapid ...
ATAL BIHARI VAJPAYEE For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact ...
THOMAS MERTON There are libertarian conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and social conservatives. I feel conserva...
TED OLSON Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no con...
H.G. WELLS (HERBERT GEORGE WELLS) Everybody is crazy. The secret consists of finding the right pavilion.
GIUSEPPE GHIARONI The root of liberalism, in a word, is hatred of compulsion, for liberalism has the respect for the i...
HAROLD EDMUND STEARNS Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado or loneliness. It consists in daring to do the right thing ...
MAHATMA GANDHI It's a small world? Perhaps in your social triangle, but for an explorer like me, hardly.
THEO ALEXANDER DOUWES Well, the real Eric Bogosian is pretty self-conscious of himself.
ERIC BOGOSIAN Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.
D. H. LAWRENCE I lived through the Fifties in the Midwest when everything that was happening - the repression of ho...
EDMUND WHITE The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.
UNKNOWN No sacrifice short of individual liberty, individual self-respect, and individual enterprise is too ...
CLARK H. MINOR Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that w...
THOMAS S. MONSON Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possib...
ERIC HOFFER Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possib...
ERIC HOFFER The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy...
GEORG SIMMEL I contribute my full being to anything and anyone that may affect a society in which the masses unde...
MAURICE SPEES The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of g...
DAVID HILBERT True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.
JOHN CALVIN For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hopi...
ALBERT CAMUS The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed fo...
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society.
LEVAR BURTON In the utopian aim of removing all power and aggression from human behavior, we run the risk of remo...
ROLLO MAY Civil Disobedience, mass or individual, is an aid to Constructive effort and is a full substitute fo...
MAHATMA GANDHI Jacques Lemaire said when a team fails, no individual is successful, ... When a team is successful, ...
BOBBY HOLIK the most exciting, or perhaps disturbing, finding.
KLAUS STOHR Success consists in being successful, not in having potential for success. Any wide piece of ground ...
FERNANDO PESSOA A vote for Eric Cantor is a vote for open borders. A vote for Eric Cantor is a vote for amnesty.
DAVE BRAT It's normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we ge...
NHAT HANH If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping f...
ALBERT CAMUS If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping f...
ALBERT CAMUS Successful self-development also involves taking more self-time to be quiet and think for oneself!
PATRICK DRIESSEN Perhaps we will drink a drop of champagne. This is an undeniable victory for a social movement.
GERARD ASCHIERI These philosophically fun ideas usually satisfy nobody. Nonetheless, they remind us that ignorance i...
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he...
ALDOUS HUXLEY To be successful in struggle requires remembrance of the Creator and the doing of good deeds. This i...
H. RAP BROWN Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding ...
MEISTER ECKHART War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcend...
ARTHUR KOESTLER Central to our work and our goal of finding solutions to global problems is the concept of mindfulne...
GOLDIE HAWN Adventure is the vitaminizing element in histories both individual and social
WILLIAM BOLITHO When the wish for peace is genuine, the means for finding it is giving in a form each mind that seek...
HELEN SCHUCMAN No social stability without individual stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY Successful people radiate self-esteem, not self-disgust.
BO BENNETT America stands for individual liberty, but that means an ordered liberty.
BAINBRIDGE COLBY Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upho...
THEODORE ROOSEVELT Social media is an advertisement for the superficial extroverted self.
HOZIER Eric did a lot of good things, but you have to credit his teammates for finding him underneath the b...
MIKE PARDON The most popular systems are those that apply a disciplined systematic technique, ... The hardest pa...
WILLIAM MCKINLEY If they're gonna get you, they wanna get you, ... And they use Machiavellian technique. The ends jus...
JOHN GOTTI Success consists in being successful, not in having potential for success. Any wide piece of ground ...
FERNANDO PESSOA A tremendous social responsibility comes with being a successful public performer.
A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The...
ROSA LUXEMBURG When a diplomat says yes he means perhaps; when he says perhaps he means no; when he says no he is n...
SOURCE UNKNOWN Eric Manly, a senior captain, was in France for a school trip.
ERICKA FANGIULLO Familialism consists of magically denying social reality, and avoiding all connections with the actu...
FéLIX GUATTARI The absence of conditions for self-realization in a country, region and community leads to stagnatio...
SUNDAY ADELAJA We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation...
TERRY EAGLETON Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about thre...
HARLAN MILLER True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one ...
ALEXANDER POPE True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one ...
ALEXANDER POPE Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to l...
JOS Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to l...
JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET My insanity begged for a distraction. (Eric)
SHANNON A. THOMPSON Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made
JACQUES BARZUN Philosophy not only begins with the individual, but also ends with the individual. For an individual...
LIN YUTANG The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic ch...
RICHARD FEYNMAN The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however med...
THEODOR ADORNO For both mice and men, social status is important; for mice, losing to a dominant mouse usually mean...
THOMAS INSEL But there was a difference between being stuck and choosing to stay. Between being found and finding...
MARTINA BOONE It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corp...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace
it.
VERONICA ROTH Social psychology is especially interested in the effect which the social group has in the determina...
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD Even after a peak parenting experience, children never transition to a fully self-tuning physiology....
THOMAS LEWIS Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freed...
NELSON MANDELA A lot of people knew who Eric was. You didn't go in Casey's and not know Eric.
ANNE REEVES Searching means having a goal, but finding means being free, being open, having no goal ... because ...
HERMANN HESSE If an individual wants to be a leader and isn't controversial, that means he never stood for anythin...
RICHARD M. NIXON For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in thei...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE He beat Wahpeton's No. 1 player in the state-qualifier round. Eric had a great weekend. For a first-...
GREG LADOUCEUR Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
HERMAN HESSE

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 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 We feel free when we escape -- even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
ERIC HOFFER