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 HOFFERThe basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
-
-
One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
ERIC HOFFER -
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
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 -
Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
ERIC HOFFER -
I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
ERIC HOFFER -
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
ERIC HOFFER -
Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
ERIC HOFFER -
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER -
It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
ERIC HOFFER -
A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
ERIC HOFFER -
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
ERIC HOFFER -
Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
ERIC HOFFER -
The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
ERIC HOFFER -
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER -
The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.
ERIC HOFFER -
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.
ERIC HOFFER -
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
ERIC HOFFER -
It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
ERIC HOFFER -
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
ERIC HOFFER -
A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one’s own life.
ERIC HOFFER -
Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
ERIC HOFFER -
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
ERIC HOFFER -
Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
ERIC HOFFER -
To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
ERIC HOFFER -
The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
ERIC HOFFER -
Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
ERIC HOFFER