Eric Hoffer ( 10 of 253 )
The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. read more
The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields...With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.
The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to read more
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.
Add a few drops of malice to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
Add a few drops of malice to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
All prayers and hopes are a reaching-out for coincidences.
All prayers and hopes are a reaching-out for coincidences.
Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
...there is no alienation that a little power will not cure.
...there is no alienation that a little power will not cure.
Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, read more
Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
Faith, enthusiasm, and passionate intensity in general are substitutes for the self-confidence born of experience and the possession of skill. read more
Faith, enthusiasm, and passionate intensity in general are substitutes for the self-confidence born of experience and the possession of skill. Where there is the necessary skill to move mountains there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are read more
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it read more
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaningless of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring upon them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves- and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.
