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
men mind snooping
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding,
echoes world quarrels
Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.
intellectual matter way
Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
country america people
Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America,
israel holocaust premonition
I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
type reduction categories
Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.
real men wish
The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
country fashion song
There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before.
men hands brotherhood-of-man
A low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men.
mother giving literature
Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
mind literature prejudice
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
fear mean way
We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.
brother jail chance
There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
originality shows
Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.