Quote

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

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
Take
Endless
Inability
Enough
Answer
Assume
Long
Answers
Hang
Way
Simply
Merit
Things
Keep
Assuming
Thinking
Two
Granted
Peculiarities
Anything
Patience
Groping
Find
Familiar
Derived

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
Eric Hoffer
Image
...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.
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
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Eric Hoffer
Image
What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.
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
To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors they can be smelled.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.
Eric Hoffer
Image
I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
Eric Hoffer