Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.
Eric Hoffer
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Eric Hoffer
Age: 84 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 25
Died: 1983
Died: May 21
Philosopher
Psychologist
Writer
New York City
New York
Screens
Fears
Compact
Intention
Intentions
Consciousness
Stubborn
Effort
Apparently
Dark
Vital
Clear
Hopes
Self
Screen
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Creativity is discontent translated into arts.
Eric Hoffer
There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
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
The superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility.
Eric Hoffer
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
Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
Eric Hoffer
The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.
Eric Hoffer
A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
Eric Hoffer
To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
Eric Hoffer
Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
Eric Hoffer
The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.
Eric Hoffer
The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
Eric Hoffer
When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
Eric Hoffer
Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder.
Eric Hoffer
The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
Eric Hoffer
Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
Eric Hoffer
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
Eric Hoffer
In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.
Eric Hoffer
The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.
Eric Hoffer
Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
Eric Hoffer