Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.
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
Hebrew
Craving
Invent
Ancient
Atheism
Whose
People
Hebrews
Impelled
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
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
To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.
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 true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
Eric Hoffer
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
Eric Hoffer
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
Eric Hoffer
An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.
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
In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.
Eric Hoffer
We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
Eric Hoffer
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer
A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.
Eric Hoffer
It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
Eric Hoffer
Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
Eric Hoffer
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
There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
Eric Hoffer
Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
Eric Hoffer
To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
Eric Hoffer
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