To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.
Eric Hoffer
Related To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain ... ERIC HOFFER Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer. ERIC HOFFER God, great principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without a principle, could not con... GIACOMO CASANOVA For it pleased God, after he had made all things by the word of his power, to create man after his o... GEORGE WHITEFIELD Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God. ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. SENECA (SENECA THE ELDER) Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. SENECA Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own ... THOMAS MERTON He who obeys God's laws finds him a father. He who disobeys them, finds him a judge. DANIEL D. PALMER There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason... CHARLES MONTESQUIEU There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason... CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive. AYN RAND He is the most powerful who has himself, in his power. SENECA (SENECA THE ELDER) The leftist is anti-individualistic... He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confid... THEODORE J. KACZYNSKI Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys ... DOUGLAS ADAMS Most powerful is he who has himself in his power. SENECA Doing something because God has said to do it does not make a person moral: it merely tells us that ... ALAN DERSHOWITZ He had the uneasy manner of a man who is not among his own kind, and who has not seen enought of the... WILLA CATHER He had the uneasy manner of a man who is not among his own kind, and who has not seen enough of the ... WILLA SIBERT CATHER Time determines the occurrence of possibilities and impossibilities, but God determines the time for... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Human... GENE RODDENBERRY We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Human... GENE RODDENBERRY Wherefore, Nietzsche concluded that the chief characteristic of a moral system was its tendency to p... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he i... WILL DURANT The basic idea of training a horse is to reduce its most powerful characteristic, its flight instinc... JAMIE ZIEHM God is the one who saved me. He who believes in God, in His cause and His truth is capable of standi... KING HUSSEIN God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive. AYN RAND The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys... RALPH WALDO EMERSON Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER The more God is glorified the more man is energic and the more satan is weak. INDONESIA123 Much terror in religion is not the will of god, it is created by power hungry clerics who thirst for... BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled o... THEODOR ADORNO The power of a writer is that he is a god of sorts. He can create his own worlds and populate them w... BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Laws are not masters, but servants, and he rules them, who obeys them. WARD BECKER The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defeats, all our evi... GEORGE MACDONALD Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the ... AYN RAND Jesus was a perfect example of following authority. He was subject to His earthly parents; he subjec... MONICA JOHNSON Remember: He-Man ?? His favorite quote "I have the Power!!!" He claimed that this power made him the... WILIAM CONSTANTINE The world is full of men who want to be right, when actually the secret of a man's strength and his ... JIM ANDERSON Whatever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand - in agriculture, in c... ABRAHAM KUYPER There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would no... MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not... MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not ... MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not ... MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet rec... THOMAS MERTON He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own vi... WILLIAM CONGREVE He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own vi... WILLIAM CONGREVE He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no... JOHN DONNE Any person who recognizes this greatest power... the power to choose. Begins to realize that he is t... J. MARTIN KOHE Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is. JEAN ANOUILH Every man is his own chief enemy. ANACHARSIS Every man is his own chief enemy. ANACHARSIS ANACHARSIS It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own imag... ERIC HOFFER No laws can be bend for just one man. Just as all are equal before the laws of God. However, if we c... C. LIDE SANGTAM The power of man;Man does not only have the power to accomplish great & unbelievable things in life,... DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) Faith in the biblical sense is substantive, based on the knowledge that the One in whom that faith i... RAVI ZACHARIAS He used to love his job excessively because, he used to dislike his wife excessively. DR HITESH C SHETH The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround ... THOMAS MERTON No! No one who was great in the world will be forgotten, but everyone was great in his own way, and ... SøREN KIERKEGAARD He is free... who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide. SALVADOR DE MADRIAGA The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for th... THOMAS HOBBES It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult ... THOMAS PAINE When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get o... OSWALD CHAMBERS A god who created man "after his own image", and still the origin of evil in man is not accredited t... JOHANN MOST He who lives in solitude may make his own laws. PUBLILIUS SYRUS We must oppose his confirmation as chief justice even more strenuously because, in that post, he wou... DEBRA NESS Johnson had been the most powerful man in the world, yet the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had r... STEPHEN AMBROSE Then came the reflection, how little at any time could a father do for the wellbeing of his children... GEORGE MACDONALD He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard ... SAMUEL ADAMS He is not going to give that much of an indication on his own, because this Fed chief is an effectiv... WAYNE ANGELL I take him at his word that he does not have an ideological agenda and that he will be his own man a... PATRICK LEAHY I cannot conceive an intention in God that Christ should satisfy his justice for the sin of them tha... JOHN OWEN He had the confidence of a man who had never been wounded. VICTOR HUGO The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and tradi... KAHLIL GIBRAN Love does not inquire into the character of the recipient but it asks what he needs. It does not lov... EMIL BRUNNER Were you there?” She shook her head. “No. I was here in Nain having a child.” �... FRANCINE RIVERS In allowing the crucifixion to take place, God did the world an incalculable favor. Though infinitel... STEVEN PINKER Feast of John Coleridge Patteson, First Bishop of Melanesia, & his Companions, Martyrs, 1871 Devo... WILLIAM LAW Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws. LEON TROTSKY The man of character is the persistent man, the man who is faithful to his own word, his own convict... MARIA MONTESSORI What is man's chief enemy? Each man is his own. ANACHARSIS CLOOTS The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had alrea... THEODORE ROOSEVELT If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that... HORATIO NELSON You may fancy the Lord had His own power to fall back upon. But that would have been to Him just the... GEORGE MACDONALD A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he esta... MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE The forgotten man. . . . He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is t... WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER The forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pa... WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER It is at Easter that Jesus is most human, and like all humans, he fails and is failed. His is not an... MICHAEL LEUNIG A man may go into the field and say his prayer and be aware of God, or he may be in Church and be aw... MEISTER ECKHART Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws. JOHN ADAMS The truest human is the one whose conduct proceeds from goodwill and an acute sense of propriety, an... MARKESA YEAGER For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? BIBLE The Boasting Traveler
A man who had traveled in foreign lands boasted very much, on returning to his... AESOP Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidenc... VINCENT VAN GOGH For someone who is far from God, silence is a difficult confrontation with his own self and with the... ROBERT SARAH One cannot shape the world without being reshaped in the process. Each gain of power requires its ow... PHIL HINE ... the Scripture is like one big, unbroken story about people who decided to follow God and ended u... LECRAE MOORE Governor Bush abdicated. He said it's not his problem. But he is the chief executive officer of this... JANET RENO [Norm said,] 'To all those who argue this war is a mistake, I'd like to point out that we've removed... BEN FOUNTAIN
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 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