Quote

The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.

Eric Hoffer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Eric Hoffer
Age: 84 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 25
Died: 1983
Died: May 21
Philosopher
Psychologist
Writer
New York City
New York
Feeling
Derive
Pleasure
Partly
Literature
Altogether
Feelings
Worthless
Giving
Favors
Pleasant
Surprise
Gives

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
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
Image
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.
Eric Hoffer
Image
One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
Eric Hoffer
Image
When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.
Eric Hoffer
Image
People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a have type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a have not type of self.
Eric Hoffer
Image
There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.
Eric Hoffer
Image
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Communists are frustrated capitalists.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
Eric Hoffer
Image
What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
Eric Hoffer
Image
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility
Eric Hoffer
Image
There is a time when the word eventually has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.
Eric Hoffer