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We can never have enough of that which we really do not want.
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
Satisfaction
Enough
Really
Never
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
Eric Hoffer
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
Eric Hoffer
Language was invented to ask questions.
Eric Hoffer
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer
A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.
Eric Hoffer
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
For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.
Eric Hoffer
There is a time when the word eventually has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.
Eric Hoffer
Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.
Eric Hoffer
A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.
Eric Hoffer
A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
Eric Hoffer
When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
Eric Hoffer
The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.
Eric Hoffer
The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
Eric Hoffer
In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them
Eric Hoffer
Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.
Eric Hoffer
Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
Eric Hoffer
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
It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
Eric Hoffer
Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
Eric Hoffer
