We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
Eric Hoffer
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More Eric Hoffer
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ERIC HOFFER We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
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ERIC HOFFER Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
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ERIC HOFFER We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
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ERIC HOFFER Facts are counterrevolutionary.
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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...
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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 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.
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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...
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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.
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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