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There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
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
Life
Esteem
Exchanging
Believer
Enormously
Gains
Utmost
Humility
Selfless
Doubt
Centered
Practice
Boundless
Self
Vanity
Even
Gain
More quotes by 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
The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.
Eric Hoffer
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
Eric Hoffer
If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
Eric Hoffer
Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
Eric Hoffer
All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
Eric Hoffer
Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
Eric Hoffer
When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.
Eric Hoffer
Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
Eric Hoffer
An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.
Eric Hoffer
Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.
Eric Hoffer
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
Eric Hoffer
The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness and both these ends are reached by imitation.
Eric Hoffer
A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.
Eric Hoffer
It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
Eric Hoffer
Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
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 genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
Eric Hoffer
The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.
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