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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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
Coupled
Grownups
Charming
Stupidity
Vanity
Ignorant
Ignorance
Naivete
Often
Indistinguishable
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
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
Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .
Eric Hoffer
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Eric Hoffer
The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Eric Hoffer
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer
The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.
Eric Hoffer
A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
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
Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
Eric Hoffer
A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
Eric Hoffer
You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.
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
We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
Eric Hoffer
That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.
Eric Hoffer
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
Eric Hoffer
The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.
Eric Hoffer
Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
Eric Hoffer
The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
Eric Hoffer
Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.
Eric Hoffer
