FastSaying

The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.


Eric Hoffer

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

Related

I think most of us don't have much leisure time anyway. So you'll see people trying to squeeze in le...
DEBBIE WILLIAMS Life lived amidst tension and busyness needs leisure. Leisure that recreates and renews. Leisure sho...
C. NEIL STRAIT I am often asked how it is that I am able to value people to such a deep degree. Apparently, I exhib...
C. JOYBELL C. The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
CYRIL CONNOLLY For starters, that’s a rather simple principle of Time Travel right there – and according to the...
CHRISTINA ENGELA You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES Leisure is not synonymous with time. Nor is it a noun. Leisure is a verb. I leisure. You leisure.
MORTIMER ADLER The mental and physical reactions to what are perceived as labor and leisure are distinctively diffe...
JONATHAN CHEN 35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give...
JAMES C. DOBSON Wit needs leisure, and certain inequalities of position
HONORE DE BALZAC How many inner resources one needs to tolerate a life of leisure without fatigue.
NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY How many inner resources one needs to tolerate a life of leisure without fatigue
NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite
STEPHEN CHBOSKY (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE.
STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY There's nothing like the deep breathes after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore st...
STHEPHEN CHBOSKY no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I think anybody in America needs to do whatever they can. A lot of people lost everything they own.
ANDY RICE The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH To grow a lot more, Eric has to find a way to multiply himself. He needs to create not just managers...
JAMES COLLINS There were hints and intimations of the shape of things to come.
DEXTER PALMER Government, obviously, cannot fill a child's emotional needs. Nor can it fill his spiritual and mora...
WILLIAM BENNETT How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine."
The Q...
LEWIS CARROLL Wake up to a brand new day and realize why you woke up to meet the day! Live to the end of another d...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH All that the spider needs to complete its web is step taking
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The capacity of the program is not sufficient for the needs of our nuclear program. But we cannot sa...
ALI LARIJANI You've never really trusted him, though you don't understand why. Something about the fact that he's...
N.K. JEMISIN One of the greatest resources people cannot mobilize themselves is that they try to accomplish great...
NIDO QUBEIN Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. Never give up on you. In order to make a difference you would have to somehow be different.
JOHNNIE DENT JR. She probably had all the time in the world, Therese thought, probably did nothing all day but what s...
PATRICIA HIGHSMITH Name the fears that are holding you back. It's the equivalent of flooding the boogeyman with light.
GINA GREENLEE There is no greater glory than to die for love.
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nasti...
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. S...
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spend...
H. L. MENCKEN You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you're the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes ...
C. JOYBELL C. They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
HERMAN MELVILLE We are talking about something that cannot be bought. It's our heritage, and it needs to be preserve...
BEN BURROUGHS A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenanc...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW I think Maine needs people. It needs diversity. It needs to be able to respect people. Openness is c...
JOHN BALDACCI Life begins somewhere and ends somewhere with time but to get somewhere with the life you have depen...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think eve...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY For a life oriented to leisure is in the end a life oriented to death – the greatest leisure of al...
ANNE LAMOTT It has occurred to me that the thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing tha...
JAMES A. GARFIELD A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenan...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. The dignity is in leisure.
HERMAN MELVILLE Maybe,' he said hesitantly, 'maybe there is a beast.'
The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph...
WILLIAM GOLDING It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER Life is short, and that's why, I don't test people; because we all fail tests sometimes, but that is...
C. JOYBELL C. We can leave a place behind, or we can stay in that place and leave our selfishness (often expressed...
JOHN H. GROBERG Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the o...
HENRY WARD BEECHER Time determines the occurrence of possibilities and impossibilities, but God determines the time for...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH My concern is a single concern - can we keep a safety net under patients so they don't end up in a h...
DR. CAROL CURRIER People without imagination are beginning to tire of the importance attached to comfort, to culture, ...
RAOUL VANEIGEM The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and ...
JUDITH MARTIN You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
G. K. CHESTERTON Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS Needs can be fulfilled, but desires cannot be. Desire is a need gone mad. Needs are simple, they com...
BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH It's nice to have things to look forward to.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisu...
WILLIAM LYON PHELPS May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH There are types of people who want to have leverage over other people's lives. For no other reason t...
C. JOYBELL C. It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fa...
AGNES REPPLIER No one should let yesterday use up too much of today. Easy to say, hard to live.
ANDREA HAIRSTON It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in lo...
J.D. SALINGER There was a house at the foot of the tower, close to the thunder of the waves breaking against the c...
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ If I provide for this life and turn away from the Lord, I am wise for a moment, but lost forever.
FRANCINE RIVERS The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS What's the difference between people who see and seek gaps and those that see and seek bridges? The ...
RICHIE NORTON Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I canno...
ANN VOSKAMP Love cannot be indifferent to the needs of suffering and afflicted people
SUNDAY ADELAJA I think, ultimately, open always wins out. It wins out because you cannot lock data in; you can'...
RAM SHRIRAM I was suddenly very aware of the fact it was me standing up in that tunnel with the wind over my fac...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY The only perspective is to really be there.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I didn't feel like reading that night, so I went downstairs and watched a half-hour long commercial ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Why is England manufacturing bigger and better airplanes and bombs and at the same time churning out...
ANNE FRANK I'm convinced normal people miss the majority of God's blessings because they're too busy to notice ...
CRAIG GROESCHEL The goal in life is not to try and live forever, but to create something that will forever in people...
KARON WADDELL We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it i...
THICH NHAT HANH We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it i...
NHAT HANH We are not sitting quietly. ... We are molding the region, security-wise, the way we think it needs ...
LIOR HOREV 2. Overcommitment and time pressure are the greatest destroyers of marriages. It takes time to devel...
JAMES C. DOBSON

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 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