Quote

It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.

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
Fanatical
Rationalize
Cowardice
Faith
Needs

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.
Eric Hoffer
Image
People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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
Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness and both these ends are reached by imitation.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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.
Eric Hoffer
Image
If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
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
To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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