“When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.”

—  Eric Hoffer

Source: First Things, Last Things (1971), Ch. 8 "Thoughts on the Present"

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness an…" by Eric Hoffer?
Eric Hoffer photo
Eric Hoffer 240
American philosopher 1898–1983

Related quotes

Ayn Rand photo

“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”

Source: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), p. 123

George Santayana photo

“Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, Ch. VII

Francisco De Goya photo

“Imagination without reason produces impossible monsters; with reason, it becomes the mother of the arts, and the source of its marvels.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

quoted by Albert Frederick Calvert, in Goya; an account of his life and works; publisher London J. Lane, 1908; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, pp. 355-377
Goya wrote this inscription upon a later copy of the etching-plate Capricho no. 43
1790s

John Wesley photo
James A. Michener photo
Abraham Joshua Heschel photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“If there be one thing certain, to my mind it is this. That if the people of this country in great numbers were to become adherents of either Communism or Fascism there could only be one end to it. And that one end would be civil war.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 23
1934
Context: When one is young one is always in a hurry, and it may well be to-day that those two alien plants— for they neither have their roots in England— Communism and Fascism, may appeal to many of you. This is a free country. You can support either creed, and you can support it in safety, but I want to put this to you. If there be one thing certain, to my mind it is this. That if the people of this country in great numbers were to become adherents of either Communism or Fascism there could only be one end to it. And that one end would be civil war.

Anton Chekhov photo
Walker Percy photo
Cristoforo Colombo photo

“When there are such lands there should be profitable things without number.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

27 November 1492
Journal of the First Voyage

Related topics