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There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it


Eric Hoffer

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There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it.
ERIC HOFFER Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
ERIC HOFFER As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved b...
LEW WALLACE As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved b...
LEW WALLACE There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.
P.G. WODEHOUSE There is no better deliverance from the world than through art; and a man can form no surer bond wit...
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE There is no better way of elevating the novel than by making it into a construct which contains idea...
HEINRICH MANN There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold re...
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold re...
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we ...
HENRY FIELDING A humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.
THOMAS A KEMPIS An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.
THOMAS KEMPIS I have found out there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to t...
MARK TWAIN I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than...
MARK TWAIN It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to...
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent a...
RAYMOND CHANDLER The country is turning into a raw materials appendage, ... There is no social justice.
GENNADY ZYUGANOV There are few surer ways to become disliked by men than to perform well where they have performed po...
BRYANT H. MCGILL There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.
JOSEPH ADDISON Grandma cheated whenever she could. She cheated because it was a much more scientific and surer way ...
ALLAN SHERMAN There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.
NELSON MANDELA There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning away.
RACHEL SIMMONS There is no clear sign that the economy is turning the corner in a meaningful way.
CHARLIE DENT Why is it better to love than to be loved? It is surer.
SACHA GUITRY Why is it better to love than to be loved? It is surer
SACHA GUITRY Why is it better to love than to be loved? It is surer
SACHA GUITRY "I froze before the keyboard. I couldn't think of a damn thing to say. No poems, no prose, no words....
ELIZABETH WURTZEL I froze before the keyboard. I couldn't think of a damn thing to say. No poems, no prose, no words. ...
ELIZABETH WURTZEL There is no thing known as bad luck. There is luck, or no luck at all.
JEFFREY FRY The difference is that instead of turning the reality of your situation into an excuse, a “No Excu...
FARSHAD ASL There is no reason to believe at this juncture that this is anything other than a manifestation of a...
LARRY BUSH There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its childr...
NELSON MANDELA Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought t...
MARCUS AURELIUS There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to t...
ERIC HOFFER By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, En...
MAX BEERBOHM There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their...
VICTOR HUGO There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open...
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open f...
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration...
BILL NYE There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the...
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES No is the opposite of yes. Yes is the opposite of no. Nothing is the opposite of nothing. There is o...
EPHDAN I have been obsequious toward Western civilization, exaggerating its merits and, at the same time, e...
LIU XIAOBO Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points t...
ARTHUR KOESTLER Awareness in its pure state is nonlocal; there’s no focal point in it. It is unbounded. Awareness,...
ILCHI LEE There is just no getting around that turning bad things into good things is up to you.
DEEPAK CHOPRA They're sending out this bizarre technological signal that mutates our DNA, turning us into them. Th...
BRANNON BRAGA As I’ve said, encountering death has a way of jerking your priorities into line.
JAMES C. DOBSON Fortunately, it worked out that way. I didn't inquire as to how many ounces it took, but apparently ...
AL GROH There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation o...
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON If everybody is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly...
SAM WALTON It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle....
AML AMEEN Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.
JAMES ALTUCHER You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite.
DEB CALETTI Based upon the information contained in this, there's no doubt it was written by Eric.
CHARLES STONE There are fortunes being made by turning fans into victims and all it starts by creating that frenzy...
ABBY ARONOWITZ I learned, too, how it was possible with the help of the picture and action to transform an apparent...
ANTON SEIDL In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one�...
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT It does by no mean ease our pain. It will never bring Eric back we will never have a son.
GERRI FLYNN Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I a...
ROBERT BRAULT It's better and easier on the transmitter to be on the air 24 hours a day rather than shutting it do...
JIM BISHOP What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even, than what he condemns, of his character, in...
AUGUST HARE For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
WILLIAM PENN There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize a small truth because i...
NEILS BOHR The ambition of the mayor to get into the heart of the community is quite laudable. However, shuttin...
CHAR MILLER When Brexiters told the public that people were exaggerating, that there would be a financial meltdo...
RICHARD BRANSON A lowly knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than the deep searching of a man’s learnings. N...
THOMAS à KEMPIS It's a surer way to a woman's heart to be interested in what she's thinking than what sh...
TINA LOUISE I always wished for this, but it's almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.
EMINEM We didn’t think anything of it at the time, but we saw several of the bodies of the crew, space pi...
CHRISTINA ENGELA It was a good thing that I was in jail, because there is no way that I could have matched the speech...
LAWRENCE GUYOT There are two ways to define manhood. One way is to say that manhood is the opposite of womanhood. T...
BRETT MCKAY To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG There is no other way to judge the work of a mind except through its words.
RICHARD MITCHELL What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character,...
AUGUSTUS HARE There's no reason in the world to suggest there was any justification for this turning into a knife ...
JAY GRANBERRY Surer to prosper than prosperity could have assur'd us.
JOHN MILTON I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix.
DEYTH BANGER Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring...
CARL THEODOR DREYER It has always been fairly safe to talk about God; it is when we start to talk about men that the tro...
WILLIAM BARCLAY There was no way to laugh anymore, to love, to care, and there was a sense of guilt in having surviv...
ROMEO DALLAIRE Hannibal Burress is my polar opposite in energy. I can be crazy, and he grounds the 'Eric Andre ...
ERIC ANDRE I'm sure of it. And it might happen quicker than you think. There's a lot of creativity winding its ...
AARON BETSKY People – most of – live in a sort of conformity, a “that's the way it is”. You have to break...
MARIANA FULGER Language is a thing of beauty, but our language is warping and dying, and turning into something so ...
LENA IZABELA MEGHANN FRATI Of course if things happen in the way that they apparently happened this time it may play into the h...
CELSO AMORIM As an actor, acting is like playing a sport. You do this thing that's intangible, and while it&#...
CHRIS EVANS There was apparently a verbal clash followed by a physical exchange.
TERRY DENBOW A candidate is not going to suddenly change once they get into office. Just the opposite, in fact. B...
MICHELLE OBAMA If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.
GEORGE ORWELL Man is a mechanism for turning things into spirit and turning spirit into things.
JOHN UPDIKE Whenever we want to combat our enemies, first and foremost we must start by understanding them rathe...
CRISS JAMI I've always thought that you don't love a country by turning a blind eye to its crimes and t...
JUNOT DIAZ The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity. Lux...
KAREN KARBO A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.
JOHN KEATS A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness
JOHN KEATS There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.
WILLIAM JAMES

More Eric Hoffer

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

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