Eric Hoffer ( 10 of 253 )
Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency.
Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency.
The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.
The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.
We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a read more
The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical read more
A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era read more
Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.
We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical read more
We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs inordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves.
The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves.
It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own read more
It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams- in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented.
