“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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is precisely because we can never really know ourselves, but only guess, that we are so vehement about the good and …" by Eric Hoffer?

Eric Hoffer 240

American philosopher 1898–1983

Mary Alice Monroe (1960) American writer

The Beach House (2002) https://books.google.com/books?id=v6uo7dNROXoC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%E2%80%9CPrivacy+is+something+that+we+maintain+for+the+good+of+ourselves+and+others.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=_xMbHZa8l6&sig=g9FWtKtkgvO11eTz7ffeYnuyMPE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiguMnRndfKAhVQ2mMKHc3nCxUQ6AEILjAD#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CPrivacy%20is%20something%20that%20we%20maintain%20for%20the%20good%20of%20ourselves%20and%20others.%E2%80%9D&f=false

“I want us to be together without bothering about ourselves- to be really together because we ARE together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

“We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge-and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves- how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Preface, Section 1
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

“By engaging in a delusive quest for happiness, we bring only suffering upon ourselves. In our frantic search for something to quench our thirst, we overlook the water all around us and drive ourselves into exile from our own lives.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

“The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present—and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past—or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 2 : The World We Have Lost

“We suffer from the evils which we, by our own free will, inflict on ourselves and ascribe them to God, who is far from being connected with them!”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.12

“In the mysterious way in which life is given to us in evolution on this planet, it pushes in the direction of its own expansion. We don’t understand it simply because we don’t know the purpose of creation; we only feel life straining in ourselves and see it thrashing others about as they devour each other. Life seeks to expand in an unknown direction for unknown reasons.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

Psychology and Religion: What Is the Heroic Individual?
The Denial of Death (1973)

“We are able to be with others only to the degree that we are able to be ourselves. This being so, we can only be in the performance to the degree that we can be ourselves: to be who we are.”

Robert Fripp (1946) English guitarist, composer and record producer

The Six Principles of the Performance Event

“By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which other are just as entitled to as we are.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Disciple and Unbelievers, p. 185.
Source: The Cost of Discipleship

“Some of us got this feeling stuck inside, all the time, like we’ve done something wrong. Like we ourselves are something wrong … We drink alcohol because it helps us feel like we can be ourselves and not be afraid. But we punish ourselves with it.”

Tommy Orange book There There

There There (2018)
Source: As quoted in [Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo, There There by Tommy Orange review – Native American stories, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/18/there-there-tommy-orange-review, 9 August 2018, The Guardian, July 18, 2018]

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Eric Hoffer 240

Related quotes

Related topics