Quote

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

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
Strife
Unlike
Satisfied
Strive
Alone
Proclaims
Might
Strives
Men
Incessantly
Proclaim

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a have type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a have not type of self.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Creativity is discontent translated into arts.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
Eric Hoffer
Image
EVERY intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
Eric Hoffer
Image
A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Children are the keys of paradise.
Eric Hoffer
Image
To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Faith is primarily a process of identification the process by which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal.
Eric Hoffer