Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.


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

Self-deception helps us deceive,
DAVID LIVINGSTONE
Whatever others may say, they say it to deceive and comfort themselves, not help you.
DEJAN STOJANOVIC
The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does.
JOHANN VON GOETHE
The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
JOHANN VON GOETHE
Many deceive themselves, imagining they'll find happiness in change.
THOMAS KEMPIS
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
MARK TWAIN
Our senses don't deceive us: our judgment does
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
A country that does not know how to read and write is easy to deceive.
ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA
A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceiv...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Deceive not thyself.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA
Men don't deceive their wives unless they love them. When they love them most, they deceive them...
JEAN GIRAUDOUX
Many people love to keep basking in fake life only and they do not feel anything to deceive themselv...
ANUJ SOMANY
In order to deceive others, you must first deceive yourself.
EFRAT CYBULKIEWICZ
My protective coloration isn't intended to deceive you, my sweet. It is intended to deceive me.
JOHN WYNDHAM
The most popular occupation of people is that of deceiver of their peers.
MARIANA FULGER
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
ERIC HOFFER
Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.
GEORGE HERBERT
Deceive not thy Physitian, Confessor, nor Lawyer.
GEORGE HERBERT
Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer
GEORGE HERBERT
Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you and he does.
KARL GERMAIN
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
NICCOLò MACHIAVELLI
Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, fo...
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
(Hegar) deliberately did that to deceive.
GARY GATES
If there's an attempt to deceive, there's little you can do.
VINCENT TRUGLIA
Deceive the rich and powerful if you will, but don't insult them.
JAPANESE PROVERB
Never deceive a friend.
HIPPARCHUS
The entertainment industry is encouraging young people to defy and deceive their parents.
MIKE DEWINE
Do not deceive or be faithless even with your enemy.
ABU BAKR
While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.
SISSELA BOK
Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.
SISSELA BOK
It tends to deceive the consumer into thinking they're buying something fresh when they are not.
DONNA ROSENBAUM
To deceive ones selfe is very easie.
GEORGE HERBERT
Sometimes to reassure you, you do not have to deceive yourself in thinking to have certainties, just...
LUIGINA SGARRO
What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falseho...
VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON
Gwen was not there to deceive anyone. She had the right to live honestly.
GLORIA ALLRED
To our knowledge, it is the first imaging study on people who lie, cheat and deceive as a group.
ADRIAN RAINE
Don't deceive me. Never leave me.
PATRICK NESS
A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false ...
JONATHAN SWIFT
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
Haughty, silent faces should not deceive us: these are the timid ones
JULES RENARD
It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
JOHN IRVING
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
JOHANN VON GOETHE
Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.
OLIVER CROMWELL
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.
OLIVER CROMWELL
Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The easiest person to deceive is one's own self.
EDWARD GEORGE BULWER-LYTTON
We do not deceive like the NRM. They put pipes on the roadside and then you think they are bringing ...
MIRIA KALULE OBOTE
I'm not denying anything. I wasn't trying to deceive anyone. But it was wrong. I overstepped the rul...
CRAIG JOHNSTON
Don’t deceive yourself with you age, it is just a number.
VIKRANT PARSAI
Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
That’s insane! But then, we’re talking about a religious cult here, and cult followers aren’t ...
JENNIFER BOSWORTH
To deceive a diplomat speak the truth, He has no experience with it
GREEK PROVERB
Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.
GEORGE BANCROFT
Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.
BERNARD BARUCH
There are no absolutes in this world, and there will always be mistakes that are made within brokera...
MARY SCHAPIRO
The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived b...
ERIC HOFFER
He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavoring to deceive the public; he that hiss...
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Be not a witness against thy neighbour without cause; and deceive not with thy lips.
BIBLE
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their...
ALBERT CAMUS
Sometimes you lie to deceive people. Sometimes you lie because you need the lie to become the truth.
RICK RIORDAN
Once again our cricketers have flattered to deceive in Australia.
TED DEXTER
He who thinks to deceive God has already deceived himself.
VIKRANT PARSAI
The easiest person to deceive is one's self.
EDWARD G. BULWER-LYTTON
It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown
ANATOLE FRANCE
To lie is always a necessity for women; above all when they choose to deceive, falsehood becomes vit...
MARQUIS DE SADE
I always win on a solid moral ground , when people deceive me or conspire against me
DR.MOHAMMED FAIG ABAD ALRAZAK
Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you.
BIBLE
You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all th...
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
If you are ready to believe, you are easy to deceive
PROVERB
… to a Prince who wants to do great things, it is necessary to learn to deceive.
NICCOLò MACHIAVELLI
Be wary, be wary, of the prosecutor who feels it necessary to deceive the court,
CHARLES RUFF
Hee that will deceive the fox, must rise betimes.
GEORGE HERBERT
Anyone can deceive us .... for a time.
[KGB]
TOM CLANCY
It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.
BLAISE PASCAL
It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power
BLAISE PASCAL
As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive one...
BRIDGET RILEY
Faked enthusiasm is worse than bad acting - it is bad acting with the intent to deceive.
BO BENNETT
Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived.
JOHANN G. SEUME
He that goes far to marry, will either deceive or be deceived
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Comrade, you can deceive us. Anyone can―for a time. But not a very long time.
TOM CLANCY
Truth is often the favorite tool of those who deceive.
BRYANT H. MCGILL
I have found that a friend may profess, yet deceive.
LORD BYRON
We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.
VOLTAIRE
No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been broug...
CARLOS FUENTES
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver. [Fr., Car c'est double plaisir de tromper le trompe...
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Love is beautiful,
A beautiful deception.
One falls in it
To deceive the other
AMIT ABRAHAM
Let not then any one deceive you, as indeed you are not deceived, inasmuch as you are wholly devoted...
IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.
WALTER SCOTT
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
SIR WALTER SCOTT
O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!
WALTER SCOTT
His very chains helped to deceive him about the harshness of his service.
BRUNO BAUER

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
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