 |
Exaggeration
|
|
Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Example
|
|
|
It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Facts
|
|
|
Facts are counterrevolutionary.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Failure
|
|
|
They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
|
There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Faith
|
|
|
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Fanaticism
|
|
|
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.
-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951
|
|
Fashion
|
|
|
The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
-Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of the Mind, 1954
|
|
|
The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind -- the mind of a fighter -- in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man's first beginning.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
|
To the old, the new is usually bad news.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Fear
|
|
|
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
|
Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter unworthiness can be a source of courage.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Fellowship
|
|
|
There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Freedom
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Friends
|
|
|
Friendship Never explain -- your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe it anyway. A real friend never gets in your way, unless you happen to be on the way down. A friend is someone you can do nothing with and enjoy it. However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
|
However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Future, The
|
|
|
Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future... We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
|
To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Generalize, Generalizations
|
|
|
We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Generosity
|
|
|
There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Glory
|
|
|
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Greatness & Great Things
|
|
|
A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Habits
|
|
|
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
-Eric Hoffer
|
|
Happiness
|
|
|
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
-Eric Hoffer
|
Books by and about Eric Hoffer