Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
ERIC HOFFERA dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
-
-
To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
ERIC HOFFER -
To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
ERIC HOFFER -
Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
ERIC HOFFER -
Anger is a prelude to courage.
ERIC HOFFER -
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
ERIC HOFFER -
A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
ERIC HOFFER -
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
ERIC HOFFER -
We run fastest and farthest when we run from 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 -
Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER -
Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.
ERIC HOFFER -
The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
ERIC HOFFER -
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question.
ERIC HOFFER -
Communists are frustrated capitalists.
ERIC HOFFER -
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
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 -
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
ERIC HOFFER -
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
ERIC HOFFER -
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
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 -
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.
ERIC HOFFER -
The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER -
The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.
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 -
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 -
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
ERIC HOFFER