Quote

We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.

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
Precisely
Happened
Remember
Really
Things
Never
Minutely

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
Eric Hoffer
Image
There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were the people, and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.
Eric Hoffer
Image
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
Eric Hoffer
Image
For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Eric Hoffer
Image
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.
Eric Hoffer
Image
In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
Eric Hoffer
Image
When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
Eric Hoffer
Image
No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion it is an evil government.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.
Eric Hoffer