|
|
All prayers and hopes are a reaching-out for coincidences.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness. He must cease to be George, Hans, Ivan or Tadao- a human atom with an existence bounded by birth and death. The most drastic way to achieve this end is by complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body. The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings. When asked who he is, his automatic response is that he is a German, a Russian, a Japanese, a Christian, a Moslem, a member of a certain tribe or family. He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives he cannot really die.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to an empty head.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person's nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant. In an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
When we leave people on their own, we are delivering them into the hands of a ruthless taskmaster from whose bondage there is no escape. The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable "animated instrument" which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
It is not sheer malice that pricks our ears to evil reports about our fellow men. For there are frequent moments when we feel lower than the lowest of mankind, and this opinion of ourselves isolates us. Hence the rumor that all flesh is base comes almost as a message of hope. It breaks down the wall that has kept us apart, and we feel one with humanity.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams- in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
It is easier to love humanity than to love your neighbor.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries greater weight than our self-interest.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people: we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
When the Greeks said, "Whom the gods love die young," they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die; young and playful.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
There are many who find the burdens, the anxiety, and the isolation of an individual existence unbearable. This is particularly true when the opportunities for self-advancement are relatively meager, and one's individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for. Such persons sooner or later turn their backs on an individual existence and strive to acquire a sense of worth and a purpose by an identification with a holy cause, a leader, or a movement. The faith and pride they derive from such an identification serve them as substitutes for the unattainable self-confidence and self-respect.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They become responsive to grandiose schemes, and will display unequaled steadfastness, formidable energies and a special fitness in the performance of tasks which would stump superior people. It seems paradoxical that defeat in dealing with the possible should embolden people to attempt the impossible, but a familiarity with the mentality of the weak reveals that what seems a path of daring is actually an easy way out: It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings. For when we fail in attaining the impossible we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense which cramps and restrains our nature.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Rudeness luxuriates in the absence of self-respect.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs inordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements.
Author: Eric Hoffer
Source: None
|
No person has the right to rain on your dreams.
Author: Marian Wright Edelman
Source: None
|
Certes, they been lye to hounds, for an hound when he cometh by the roses, or by other bushes, though he may nat pisse, yet wole he heve up his leg and make a countenance to pisse.
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Source: None
|
Instinct is untaught ability.
Author: Alexander Bain
Source: None
|
Irony is the hygiene of the mind.
Author: Elizabeth Bibesco
Source: None
|
Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed.
Author: Francis Bacon
Source: None
|
