Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer
Eric Hofferwas an American moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that The Ordeal of Change was his finest work...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth25 July 1902
CountryUnited States of America
society desire finals
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.
agency soul society
Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency.
society holiness causes
The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.
frustration self society
The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.
opposites society together
Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.
doctors society disease
Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
society privilege reputation
One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
fighting men society
It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for,they do not feel like fighting.
powerful hatred society
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.
opposites society way
There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it
society deceiving deceived
The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.
simple society
It is not at all simple to understand the simple.
sacrifice self society
The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
letting-go ideas society
Conservatism is sometimes a symptom of sterility. Those who have nothing in them that can grow and develop must cling to what they have in beliefs, ideas and possessions. The sterile radical, too, is basically conservative. He is afraid to let go of the ideas and beliefs he picked up in his youth lest his life be seen as empty and wasted.