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Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
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
Spiritual
Stagnation
Made
Predictable
Men
Unpredictable
Life
Wholly
Inner
Becomes
Environment
Society
Ensues
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Eric Hoffer
Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.
Eric Hoffer
We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
Eric Hoffer
When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.
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The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
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
The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.
Eric Hoffer
The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
Eric Hoffer
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
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
Eric Hoffer
Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
Eric Hoffer
The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.
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
Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.
Eric Hoffer
Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
Eric Hoffer
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
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
The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
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
