Eric Hoffer Quotes (240 quotes, page 4)

From The Passionate State of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955), p. 260 ; as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0231071949, ed. Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press (1993), p. 741
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

People , Help

“It is not good for our efforts at self-realization to know the opinions other people have of us. It is difficult or perhaps impossible to be ourselves if we are known.”

Eric Hoffer

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

People , Effort

“A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

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

Men

“Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were "the people," and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.”

Eric Hoffer

"The Trend Toward Anarchy," p. 52
In Our Time (1976)

People , Age , Home , Time

“It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 49
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Way , Feeling , Light , Suffering

“Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 123
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Peaceful , Motivation

“Not only are oppression and exploitation an old story in Asia, but the colonial regimes of the British in lndia and of the Dutch in lndonesia were fairly beneficient—more so perhaps than any regime those countries ever had or are likely to have for some time. I am convinced that were the Western colonial powers a hundred times more beneficent, and had they been animated from very beginning by the purest philantropic motives, their impact on the Orient would still have had the fateful consequences we are witnessing at present.”

Eric Hoffer

Conflict and consensus: readings toward a sociological perspective (1973), p. 438, Harper & Row.

Country , Animals , Time , Motivation

“We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves.”

Eric Hoffer

Ch. 1: "Drastic Change" http://books.google.com/books?id=7Y-NoJ8yNIkC&q=%22every+radical+adjustment+is+a+crisis+in+self-esteem%22&pg=PA3#v=onepage
The Ordeal of Change (1963)

“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.”

Eric Hoffer

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

Truth , Religion , Parting

“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.”

Eric Hoffer

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.”

Eric Hoffer

Section 163
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

God , Fear , Law , Confidence

“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.”

Eric Hoffer

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.”

Eric Hoffer

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.”

Eric Hoffer

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

Freedom

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

Eric Hoffer

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.”

Eric Hoffer

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.”

Eric Hoffer

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

Evil

“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.”

Eric Hoffer

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

Love , Men , Hate , Soul

“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.”

Eric Hoffer

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

Life , People , Heart

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

Eric Hoffer

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

Happy , Search , Happiness

“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.”

Eric Hoffer

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

Fear , Feeling , Confidence , Freedom

“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.”

Eric Hoffer

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

Reality , Envy

“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.”

Eric Hoffer

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