Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer (25 July 1902 – 21 May 1983) was an American writer on social issues. His first book, The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements (1951) is widely recognized as a classic on mass-movements and the psychological roots of fanaticism. Despite rising to fame with the success and popularity of this work, he continued to work as a longshoreman until retiring at age 65.
Found 56 thoughts of Eric Hoffer
We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
Eric Hoffer
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
Eric Hoffer
It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
Eric Hoffer
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.
Eric Hoffer
No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.
Eric Hoffer
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer
We feel free when we escape -- even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
Eric Hoffer
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
Eric Hoffer
Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
Eric Hoffer
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
Eric Hoffer
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
Eric Hoffer
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer
We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.
Eric Hoffer
We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.
Eric Hoffer
We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us.
Eric Hoffer
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
Eric Hoffer
You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, and animals - as by turning him into a machine. Both the natural and the mechanical are the opposite of that which is uniquely human. Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines. It is also obvious that when man domesticated animals and plants he acquired self-made machines for the production of food, power, and beauty.
Eric Hoffer
He who has nothing and wants something is less frustrated than he who has something and wants more.
Eric Hoffer
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
Eric Hoffer
There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.
Eric Hoffer
Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
Eric Hoffer
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
Eric Hoffer
