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Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
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
Absolutes
Absolute
Turned
Possessors
Turns
Despot
Power
Despots
Men
Despotism
Clay
Anti
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.
Eric Hoffer
An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.
Eric Hoffer
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
Eric Hoffer
When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die young and playful.
Eric Hoffer
To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
Eric Hoffer
We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
Eric Hoffer
First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
Eric Hoffer
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
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
Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.
Eric Hoffer
All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.
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
We cannot hate those who we despise.
Eric Hoffer
Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
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
With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
Eric Hoffer
Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
Eric Hoffer
Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
Eric Hoffer
