Quote

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

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
Thing
Deceitfulness
Cope
Sheer
Selfishness
Stupidity
Vanity
Hardest

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
Eric Hoffer
Image
An empty head is not really empty it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Those who feel guilty are afraid and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.
Eric Hoffer
Image
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
Eric Hoffer