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The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.


Eric Hoffer

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The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When ...
ERIC HOFFER Basic Principles:

1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creati...
JULIA CAMERON When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It i...
KATHERINE MANSFIELD I believe when we’re able to fully own and express ourselves, we are able to tap into a creative p...
LAURYN DOLL When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It i...
KATHERINE MANSFIELD Our biggest goal is to continue to force ourselves to always start our creative work on a white page...
GUY LALIBERTE The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental cap...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselve...
ROLLO MAY Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselve...
DR. ROLLO MAY It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.
PETER USTINOV Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ours...
ROLLO MAY My creative side is identifying all these great entrepreneurial creative people that come up with gr...
CARMEN BUSQUETS The best way to describe your total creative capacity is to say that for all practical purposes it i...
GEORGE LEONARD If organized labor is going to survive and thrive in the future, we have to change our tactics and b...
GARY KELLEY All you have have to do is watch the commercials. It's clearly an unfair use of our creative and int...
LARRY SCHWARTZ The love you get, is equal to the love you give.
BEN OAK Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
ERIC HOFFER We all need to have a creative outlet - a window, a space - so we don't lose track of ourselves.
NORMAN FISCHER All we ask of our guys is that they take good shots. The shots we took tonight were good shots, shot...
PAUL GRAY Our power to think is infinite, consequently that means our creative power is unlimited!
STEPHEN RICHARDS Leadership’s primary job is to enhance creative capacity by developing collectively effective lead...
WILLIAM A. ADAMS All prosperity begins in the mind and is dependent only upon the full use of our creative imaginatio...
RUTH ROSS All prosperity begins in the mind and is dependent only on the full use of our creative imagination.
RUTH ROSS My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectatio...
MICHAEL J. FOX Wisdom and knowledge decrease in inverse proportion to age.
WILLIAM J. LYNOTT When we give ourselves fully to something, we own it. In a sense, we spin, spiral and wrap our spiri...
LILY CHATTERJEE The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it.
EDWARD ALBEE The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.
GEORGE LEONARD The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.
GEORGE B. LEONARD when we look up, it widens our horizons. we see what a little speck we are in the universe, so insig...
JULIA GREGSON Less is more, with creativity, and without creativity, less is less.
RONALD ANTON When we pity ourselves all we see is ourselves. When we have problems, all we see are our problems a...
ANN MARIE AGUILAR Our clients demand the latest in communications technology to stay ahead of their competitors and dr...
FURQAN NAZEERI I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inv...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER We expect our media to lead and open doors for our young talents. As we need creative engineers, doc...
MOHAMMED BIN RASHID AL MAKTOUM Our creative dreams are subject to grudge-holding when we decide that other people somehow have made...
S.A.R.K. Rather than finding faults in experiences, wisdom is finding the common thread in everything. By eve...
TONY SAMARA We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.
BILL HICKS You know how creative people are, we have to try everything until we find our niche.
E.A. BUCCHIANERI If the only new thing we have to offer is an improved version of the past, then today can only be in...
ROBERT HEWISON I don't think anybody in our business is creative. What we do is copy something better than the next...
HENRY SIEGEL When we treat children's play as seriously as it deserves, we are helping them feel the joy that's t...
FRED ROGERS What I've realized is that we're our own harshest critics. We give ourselves limitations. Bu...
CARLA GUGINO What's become a big theme in my music is my dad as a narrative character. I never had the opport...
K. FLAY To be creative, first we must be generous. Then we must have a quiet, indomitable belief in our own ...
DONNA GODDARD Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the of...
ALDOUS HUXLEY You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrai...
HOPE MIRRLEES Creative writing is so under appreciated that I just feel we need our own place to congregate.
ELIZABETH PETERSEN I think of Todd as our creative director. He is a visionary when it comes to creating unique figures...
LARRY MARDER I have discovered in 20 years of moving around a ballpark, that the knowledge of the game is usually...
BILL VEECK Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an...
LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL
NATALIE URQUIETA The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, ...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN We are doing the most important possible work in the world when we open the door and reveal our crea...
JACOB NORDBY The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.
GILLIAN FLYNN Polly has done a fantastic job overseeing some of our most important movies. She has great creative ...
JEFF ROBINOV It's all we have left. We've lost our homes and our city. Now all we have left is our families and f...
CHRIS SCELFO The creative principle is less about dogma and more about opening ourselves to the evolution of cons...
ALEX GREY We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with depende...
FRED ROGERS Creative power, is that receptive attitude of expectancy which makes a mold into which the plastic a...
THOMAS TROWARD Teenagers are some of the most passionate, dynamic and creative people I know. Yet, too often, this ...
MALORIE BLACKMAN The real magic is in making the intangible idea, the creative impulse, manifest and live in our real...
MARK RYAN By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons. We have found out that only a few thi...
MARIE DRESSLER We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from...
JAMES MADISON We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from...
UNKNOWN sacred knowledge of the cosmos seems to be hidden within our souls and is shown within our artwork a...
NIKKI SHIVA There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and inv...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON When I try to control too much, the flow is gone. With our sport, you have to let things flow.
LINDSAY ALCOCK We all sometimes take ourselves too seriously. I want them to think that I'm one of them, that this ...
GENE DEFILIPPO Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
W. EUGENE SMITH Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
EUGENE W. SMITH Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
W EUGENE SMITH We all have times when we lack confidence and don’t feel good about ourselves and this is the mome...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA Dogmatism of all kinds--scientific, economic, moral, as well as political--are threatened by the cre...
ROLLO MAY Our Web site is a great resource for us now, but in this business, especially at the high-end creati...
LESLIE BERLIANT One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely bec...
ROBERT KENNEDY Being present is being connected to All Things.
S. KELLEY HARRELL, M. DIV. To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g...
C. JOYBELL C. Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
C. NORTHCOTE PARKINSON Our lives improve only when we take chances -- and the first and most difficult risk we can take is ...
WALTER ANDERSON Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is t...
WALTER ANDERSON Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is...
WALTER ANDERSON Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to ...
WALTER ANDERSON Next generations will not know what is to have childhood.
DANIEL MELGAçO When everything is said and done, all we have left is the content of our character and the quality o...
JAMES P KREHBIEL Eric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the...
JODI PICOULT No industry is immune and no occupation is safe. All of us need to begin to think in terms of our ow...
STEVEN PRESSFIELD Let's not pound our chest or clamor for recognition as to what great teachers we are. But, rather re...
ROBERTO TORRES LIFESTYLE TRAINER We all need to be mocked from time to time, lest we take ourselves too seriously.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spe...
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON Games people are creative people, ... Creative people are all different. So, you have to be all thin...
IAN LIVINGSTONE We did most things in one take. We never play a song the same way. We're trying to take our music in...
JACK JOSTES Creativity takes courage. Not just once, but consistently. Without courage we cannot be creative. Wi...
LUCY H. PEARCE When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask...
GEORGE O'NEIL When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to...
EDWARD HIRSCH We don't take ourselves too seriously. We just have fun.
DOUG MACK We think the settlement process is a better way to go. You can get creative. You can take risks.
DAVE KVAMME Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, ou...
DANIEL GOLEMAN

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ERIC HOFFER Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us...
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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.
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ERIC HOFFER How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!
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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.
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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.
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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 We feel free when we escape -- even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
ERIC HOFFER