Hoffer Quotes

Eric Hoffer - “The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future. Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophesies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.”

Eric Hoffer - “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”

Eric Hoffer - “You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Eric Hoffer - “The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.”

Eric Hoffer - “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.”

Eric Hoffer - “We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the remarkable fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.”

Eric Hoffer - “The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.”

Eric Hoffer - “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.”

Eric Hoffer - “There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.”

10.

Eric Hoffer - “The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.”

11.

Eric Hoffer - “Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.”

12.

Eric Hoffer - “To spell out the obvious is often to call it into question.”

13.

Eric Hoffer - “Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.”

14.

Eric Hoffer - “We usually see only the things we are looking for so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.”

15.

Eric Hoffer - “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who survive; the 'learned' find themselves fully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

16.

Eric Hoffer - “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.”

17.

Eric Hoffer - “The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action — the ability to pass directly from thought to action.”

18.

Eric Hoffer - “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.”

19.

Eric Hoffer - “The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.”

20.

Eric Hoffer - “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.”

21.

Eric Hoffer - “Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.”

22.

Eric Hoffer - “The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.”

23.

Eric Hoffer - “The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else — we are the busiest people in the world.”

24.

Eric Hoffer - “To believe that is we could but have this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.”

25.

Eric Hoffer - “There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.”

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