01UndatedThe sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
02UndatedIf free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
03UndatedIn a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
04UndatedIt is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
05UndatedThe less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
06UndatedEvery great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
07UndatedThey who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor. (Eric Hoffer 1902-1983)Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
08UndatedThe hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
09UndatedDisappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
11UndatedThe less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
12UndatedWhen people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
13UndatedIf a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
14UndatedThe opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
15UndatedThere is perhaps some hope to be derived from the fact that in most instances where an attempt to realize an ideal society gave birth to the ugliness and violence of a prolonged active mass movement the experiment was made on a vast scale and with a heterogeneous population. Such was the case in the rise of Christianity and Islam, and in the French, Russian and Nazi revolutions. The promising communal settlements in the small state of Israel and the successful programs of socialization in the small Scandinavian states indicate perhaps that when the attempt to realize an ideal society is undertaken by a small nation with a more or less homogeneous population it can proceed and succeed in an atmosphere which is neither hectic nor coercive.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
17UndatedTreasure the memories of past misfortunes they constitute our bank of fortitude.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
18UndatedThe genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
20UndatedIt is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
21UndatedIt is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have 'something worth fighting for' they do not feel like fighting.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
22UndatedEven in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
23UndatedIt is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.Eric Hoffer / quote ↗
