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We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.
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
Need
Suffer
Giving
Meaning
Needs
Existence
Much
Suffering
Something
Purpose
Life
Also
Give
Live
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.
Eric Hoffer
God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: I am what I am. Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: I am what I am not.
Eric Hoffer
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
Eric Hoffer
Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were the people, and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.
Eric Hoffer
Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
Eric Hoffer
Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
Eric Hoffer
Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
Eric Hoffer
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
Eric Hoffer
We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.
Eric Hoffer
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
Eric Hoffer
The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.
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
It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
Eric Hoffer
Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
Eric Hoffer
The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
Eric Hoffer
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
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
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
When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
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