Quote

If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.

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
Written
Asks
Good
Accomplished
Sentences
Anybody

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power.
Eric Hoffer
Image
When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong it easily becomes a fashion.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
Eric Hoffer
Image
When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
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
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
Eric Hoffer
Image
When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
Eric Hoffer
Image
We cannot hate those who we despise.
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
The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
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
Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors they can be smelled.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
Eric Hoffer