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We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer
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Eric Hoffer
Age: 84 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 25
Died: 1983
Died: May 21
Philosopher
Psychologist
Writer
New York City
New York
Knowledge
Things
Vehement
Concerning
Precise
Diversity
Least
Open
Literature
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Eric Hoffer
The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
Eric Hoffer
The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.
Eric Hoffer
For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.
Eric Hoffer
We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
Eric Hoffer
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
Eric Hoffer
Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
Eric Hoffer
The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.
Eric Hoffer
Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
Eric Hoffer
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
Eric Hoffer
People haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
Eric Hoffer
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
Eric Hoffer
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Eric Hoffer
The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.
Eric Hoffer
That which is unique and worthwhile in us makes itself felt only in flashes. If we do not know how to catch and savor the flashes we are without growth and exhilaration.
Eric Hoffer
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
Eric Hoffer
Where unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized.
Eric Hoffer
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
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
Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.
Eric Hoffer
