“The most important point is — and remains — not to take oneself seriously.”
Entry (1954)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Context: The most important point is — and remains — not to take oneself seriously. There is no past, and, certainly, no future. There are but a few years — ten at the most. You pass your days as best you can, doing as little harm as possible. Let the desires be few and treat expectations as weeds. You read, scribble as the spirit moves you, hear some new music, see every week the few people you are attached to. Again: guard yourself, above all, against self-dramatization, a feeling of importance, and the sprouting of expectations.
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Eric Hoffer 240
American philosopher 1898–1983Related quotes
1977
The First Three Minutes (1977; second edition 1993)
Repudiei sempre que me compreendessem. Ser compreendido é prostituir-se. Prefiro ser tomado a sério como o que não sou, ignorado humanamente, com decência e naturalidade.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 128
As quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) by James Beasley Simpson; also quoted in Running on Empty: Meditations for Indispensable Women (1992) by Ellen Sue Stern, p. 235
Paraphrased variants: The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.
Take your work seriously, but never yourself.
Source: The 80/20 principle: the secret of achieving more with less (1999), p. 142
in the Holocaust
Source: [Satloff, Robert, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach Into Arab lands, PublicAffairs, 2007, 163, 9781586485108]
Source: [Laqueur, Walter, The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, Oxford University Press, 2006, 141, 9780195304299]
“The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.”