Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
"Eric Hoffer" was an American Ethics/moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer (1951), was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that The Ordeal of Change was his finest work.
If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous writers! More Eric Hoffer on Wikipedia.No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.
The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
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.
We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.
The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.
To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbors as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant of others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
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.
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.
The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.
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.
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.
We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us.
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.
One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
Successful action tends to become an end in itself.
Take man's most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
He who has nothing and wants something is less frustrated than he who has something and wants more.
We cannot be sure that we have something to live for unless we are ready to die for it.
It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
It is easier to love humanity as a whole that to love one's neighbor.
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a 'have' type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a 'have not' type of self.
The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
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.
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