Eric Hoffer: Trending quotes

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Eric Hoffer: 480 quotes14 likes

“Whenever we proclaim the uniqueness of a religion, a truth, a leader, a nation, a race, a part or a holy cause, we are also proclaiming our own uniqueness.”

Section 37
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.”

Entry (1955)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“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.”

Section 163
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

“To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews, and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.”

Section 126
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.”

Entry (1954)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.”

The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“Good writing, like gold, combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.”

Entry (1957)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“The beginning of thought is in disagreement — not only with others but also with ourselves.”

The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“It is precisely because we can never really know ourselves, but only guess, that we are so vehement about the good and the evil ascribed to us by others. In maintaining ourselves against all comers, we are maintaining something that is unknown, uncertain, and never wholly provable. We need a chorus of consent, and we are engaged in an unceasing proselytizing campaign in our own behalf.”

Entry (1954)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals… You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on.”

Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1HqWUMxbs#t=2m23s with Eric Sevareid (1967)

“Perhaps people throw themselves into heated polemics to give content to their lives, to warm their hearts. What Luther said of hatred is true of all quarreling. There is nothing like a feud to make life seem full and interesting.”

Entry (1950)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”

Section 280 http://books.google.com/books?id=msOwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+search+for+happiness+is+one+of+the+chief+sources+of+unhappiness%22&pg=PA151#v=onepage <br class="br">The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.”

Section 115
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.”

Section 68
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.”

Section 211
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.”

Section 83
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.”

Section 216
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.”

Entry (1957)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“We can never have enough of that which we really do not want, and… we run fastest and farthest from ourselves.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 37, Ch.6 Misfits
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts

“J. B. S. Haldane counts fanaticism among the only four really important inventions made between 3000 B. C and 1400 A. D. It was a Judaic-Christian invention. And it is strange to think that in receiving this malady of the soul the world also received a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead—an instrument of resurrection.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 125, Ch.18 Good and Bad Mass Movements, citing Haldane's The Inequality of Man (1938)
The True Believer (1951), Part Four: Beginning and End