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“To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats — we know it not.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 59
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others — that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.”

Eric Hoffer

Journal entry (30 October 1958, 6:30 am)
Working and Thinking on the Waterfront (1969)

“Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 54
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

“We tend today to exaggerate the effectiveness of persuasion as a means of inculcating opinion and shaping behavior. …Actually the fabulous effects ascribed to propaganda have no greater foundation in fact than the fall of the walls of Jericho ascribed to the blast of Joshua's trumpets.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 83
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

“The most incurably frustrated—and, therefore, the most vehement—among the permanent misfits are those with an unfulfilled craving for creative work. Both those who try to write, paint, compose, etcetera, and fail decisively, and those who after tasting the elation of creativeness feel a drying up of the creative flow within and know that never again will they produce aught worthwhile, are alike in the grip of a desperate passion. Neither fame nor power nor riches nor even monumental achievements in other fields can still their hunger. Even the wholehearted dedication to a holy cause does not always cure them. Their unappeased hunger persists, and they are likely to become the most violent extremists in the service of their holy cause.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

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

“Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 36
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

“The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time — not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.”

Eric Hoffer

Entry (1952)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 13
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing — as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.”

Eric Hoffer

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

“Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals; yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.”

Eric Hoffer

Entry (1956)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses.”

Eric Hoffer

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

“For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Preface
The True Believer (1951)

“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 65, Ch.14 Unifying Agents
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

“God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: "I am what I am." Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: "I am what I am not."”

Eric Hoffer

Section 54
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 220
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.”

Eric Hoffer

"Money" p. 37
In Our Time (1976)

“It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.”

Eric Hoffer

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

“Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 225
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 21, Ch.5 The Poor
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts