Eric Hoffer: Use

Eric Hoffer was American philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on use.

Eric Hoffer: 480 quotes13 likes

“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)

“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)

“When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 13
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

“That which is unique and worthwhile in us makes itself felt only in flashes. If we do not know how to catch and savor the flashes we are without growth and exhilaration.”

Also quoted in Between the Devil and the Dragon : The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer (1982)
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

“The elites are finally catching up with us. We can hear the swish of leather as saddles are heaved on our backs. The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.”

Source: First Things, Last Things (1971), p. 65