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We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.
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
Opinion
Dies
Fact
Facts
Trying
Readiness
Indeed
Prove
Ready
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
Eric Hoffer
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
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Eric Hoffer
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
Eric Hoffer
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
Eric Hoffer
We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
Eric Hoffer
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
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 intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are.
Eric Hoffer
Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
Eric Hoffer
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
Eric Hoffer
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.
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
My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
Eric Hoffer
Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
Eric Hoffer
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience... The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending -- for making a show -- and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.
Eric Hoffer
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
Intolerance is the ''Do Not Touch'' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness.
Eric Hoffer
Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.
Eric Hoffer
God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: I am what I am. Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: I am what I am not.
Eric Hoffer
