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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
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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
Yards
Truck
Lunch
Towns
Freight
Fields
Distracting
Waiting
Railroad
Done
Railroads
Writing
Noon
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience... The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending -- for making a show -- and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.
Eric Hoffer
The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.
Eric Hoffer
We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
Eric Hoffer
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
Eric Hoffer
The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.
Eric Hoffer
This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter
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
Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.
Eric Hoffer
To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.
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The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.
Eric Hoffer
Language was invented to ask questions.
Eric Hoffer
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
Eric Hoffer
It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
Eric Hoffer
Intolerance is the ''Do Not Touch'' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness.
Eric Hoffer
Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
Eric Hoffer
Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
Eric Hoffer
The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.
Eric Hoffer
Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
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
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
