Quote

For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future but an excuse can last for life.

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
Future
Leaves
Better
Excuse
Matter
Dare
Many
Achievement
Great
Prove
Life
Failure
People
Lasts
Last

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.
Eric Hoffer
Image
My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
Image
...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Creativity is discontent translated into arts.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
Eric Hoffer