Quote

Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.

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
Way
Intellectual
Achieve
Ability
Fact
Words
Facts
Doctrinaire
Nothing
Momentous
Matter
Offends

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
Eric Hoffer
Image
I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
Eric Hoffer
Image
What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.
Eric Hoffer
Image
There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
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
It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice - that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt - are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Anger is a prelude to courage.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.
Eric Hoffer