Quote

Language was invented to ask questions.

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
Asks
Language
Humanness
Invented
Questions

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
Image
They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
Eric Hoffer
Image
When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
Eric Hoffer
Image
There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.
Eric Hoffer
Image
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate.
Eric Hoffer
Image
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
Eric Hoffer
Image
A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.
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