Quotes by Hoffer, Eric

"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are."

Hoffer, Eric on change
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"There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet."

Hoffer, Eric on chastity   

"The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person."

Hoffer, Eric on suspicion   

"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents."

Hoffer, Eric on talent
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"We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it."

Hoffer, Eric on talkativeness
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"Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains."

Hoffer, Eric on technology   

"There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself."

Hoffer, Eric on totalitarianism   

"It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned."

Hoffer, Eric on weakness   

"The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us."

Hoffer, Eric on wisdom   

"Youth itself is a talent -- a perishable talent."

Hoffer, Eric on youth   

"Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults."

Hoffer, Eric on adolescence
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"Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless."

Hoffer, Eric on passion
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"Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity."

Hoffer, Eric on conformity
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"What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?"

Hoffer, Eric on conventionality   

"When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion."

Hoffer, Eric on war   

"Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny."

Hoffer, Eric on credulity   

"Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow."

Hoffer, Eric on death   

"How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty."

Hoffer, Eric on death   

"It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living."

Hoffer, Eric on death   

"The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flowby the tilt of the social landscape. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"It is cheering to see that the rats are still aroundthe ship is not sinking. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!"

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"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. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs. "

Hoffer, Eric on uncategorised   

"Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem. Hoffer, Eric "

Hoffer, Eric on change