Quote

The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.

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
Obvious
Also
Self
Real
Urge
Urges
Escape
Rational

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
Eric Hoffer
Image
A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
Eric Hoffer
Image
...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
Eric Hoffer
Image
People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
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
It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
Eric Hoffer
Image
In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
Eric Hoffer
Image
No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments.
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
The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
Eric Hoffer