“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)

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 "There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselve…" by Eric Hoffer?
Eric Hoffer photo
Eric Hoffer 240
American philosopher 1898–1983

Related quotes

Dwight Morrow photo

“We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their acts.”

Dwight Morrow (1873–1931) American politician

Quoted by Harold Nicolson in his biography Dwight Morrow (1935), p. 50 http://books.google.com/books?id=l3upji62bdIC&q=%22We+are+all+inclined+to+judge+ourselves+by+our+ideals%22&pg=PA50#v=onepage- 51 http://books.google.com/books?id=l3upji62bdIC&q=%22others+by+their+acts%22&pg=PA51#v=onepage

Joan Didion photo
Robert Burns photo

“Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.”

To a Louse, st. 8 (1786) http://www.poetry-online.org/burns_to_a_louse.htm
Variant: O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
Source: The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns
Context: O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us
An' ev'n Devotion

William Kingdon Clifford photo

“Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.
It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, than when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with — if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.

Aldous Huxley photo
Pope Francis photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance.”

Wir haben uns über unser Dasein vor uns selbst zu verantworten; folglich wollen wir auch die wirklichen Steuermänner dieses Daseins abgeben und nicht zulassen, daß unsre Existenz einer gedankenlosen Zufälligkeit gleiche.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Marcus Garvey photo
Thomas Noon Talfourd photo

“In ourselves
In our own honest hearts and chainless hands
Will be our safeguard:”

Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795–1854) British politician

Act v.
Ion (1835)

Related topics