Quote

Those who feel guilty are afraid and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.

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
Guilty
Somehow
Afraid
Seem
Seems
Feel
Feels
Onlooker
Fearful

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

Image
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
Image
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Children are the keys of paradise.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Intolerance is the ''Do Not Touch'' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness.
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
Whenever we proclaim the uniqueness of a religion , a truth , a leader, a nation, a race, a part or a holy cause, we are also proclaiming our own uniqueness.
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
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
Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a lump. And it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes, it is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
Image
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
Image
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
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
When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
Eric Hoffer
Image
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer
Image
It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness and both these ends are reached by imitation.
Eric Hoffer
Image
The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.
Eric Hoffer