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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
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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
Free
Minimum
Social
Threat
Sense
Function
Order
Intellectual
Much
Leadership
Worth
Workingman
Economy
Automated
Society
Anathema
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
Eric Hoffer
There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.
Eric Hoffer
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
Eric Hoffer
We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
Eric Hoffer
People haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
Eric Hoffer
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
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer
It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
Eric Hoffer
One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.
Eric Hoffer
It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.
Eric Hoffer
Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
Eric Hoffer
There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
Eric Hoffer
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
Eric Hoffer
The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
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
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
There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
Eric Hoffer
To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews , and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.
Eric Hoffer
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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
