Quote

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.

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
Think
Exaggerating
Thinking
Exaggerate
Exaggeration
Refusal
Praise
Literature
Disinclination
Process
Alibi
Thought
Infrequently

More quotes by 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
Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
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 great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
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
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact
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
Children are the keys of paradise.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
Eric Hoffer
Image
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is not at all simple to understand the simple.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.
Eric Hoffer