A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
ERIC HOFFERYou can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
-
-
I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.
ERIC HOFFER -
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
ERIC HOFFER -
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
ERIC HOFFER -
The education explosion is producing a vast number of people who want to live significant, important lives but lack the ability to satisfy this craving for importance by individual achievement. The country is being swamped with nobodies who want to be somebodies.
ERIC HOFFER -
Rudeness is the weak man’s limitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER -
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
ERIC HOFFER -
Children are the keys of paradise.
ERIC HOFFER -
Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
ERIC HOFFER -
The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
ERIC HOFFER -
The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
ERIC HOFFER -
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
ERIC HOFFER -
There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
ERIC HOFFER -
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
ERIC HOFFER -
The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER -
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
ERIC HOFFER -
Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.
ERIC HOFFER -
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER -
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER -
To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
ERIC HOFFER -
It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
ERIC HOFFER -
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
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 -
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER -
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
ERIC HOFFER -
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
ERIC HOFFER -
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
ERIC HOFFER