Eric Hoffer: Trending quotes

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“If in order to keep the wheels turning you have to deafen ears with propaganda, crack the whip of Terror, and keep pushing people around, then you haven't got a machine civilization no matter how numerous and ingenious your machines.”

Eric Hoffer

Source: The Ordeal of Change (1963), Ch. 5: "The Readiness to Work"

“The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 94
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

“I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.”

Eric Hoffer

Source: Before the Sabbath (1979), p. 79

“The capacity to resist coercion stems partly from the individual's identification with a group.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 45, Ch. 13 Factors Promoting Self-sacrifice
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

“The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 113 http://books.google.com/books?id=msOwAAAAIAAJ&amp;q=%22The+pleasure+we+derive+from+doing+favors+is+partly+in+the+feeling+it+gives+us+that+we+are+not+altogether+worthless%22&amp;pg=PA72#v=onepage <br class="br">The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.”

Eric Hoffer

"Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely'", The New York Times Magazine (April 25, 1971), p. 50.

“To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 215
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“The fear of becoming a "has been" keeps some people from becoming anything.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 231 http://books.google.com/books?id=msOwAAAAIAAJ&amp;q=%22The+fear+of+becoming+a+has+been+keeps+some+people+from+becoming+anything%22&amp;pg=PA134#v=onepage <br class="br">The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 140
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 61
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“When the same person or persons (or the same type of person) leads a movement from its inception to maturity, it usually ends in disaster.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

The True Believer (1951), Part Four: Beginning and End

“Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 78
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.”

Eric Hoffer

Source: Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), p. 20

“A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past. (1954), p. 75”

Eric Hoffer

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

“What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.”

Eric Hoffer

Entry (1951)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“I have never felt that I had a thought too profound for others to understand. On the contrary, it always seemed to me axiomatic that what was clear to me should be clear and easy to everyone else. This despite the fact that it often took me years to grope my way to an idea…. I can spend days and even months on a single sentence. I do not know how to skip. To think and write with me is like putting brick on brick.”

Eric Hoffer

Entry (1959)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.”

Eric Hoffer

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

“It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.”

Eric Hoffer

As quoted in Dictionary of Quotable Definitions (1970) by Eugene Brussell

“A good sentence is a key. It unlocks the mind of the reader.”

Eric Hoffer

Entry (1962)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 26
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)