Eric Hoffer - The Ordeal of Change (1963)

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When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die; young and playful.

Eric Hoffer
We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves.

Eric Hoffer
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

Eric Hoffer
There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.

Eric Hoffer
If in order to keep the wheels turning you have to deafen ears with propaganda, crack the whip of Terror, and keep pushing people around, then you haven't got a machine civilization no matter how numerous and ingenious your machines.

Eric Hoffer
There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it

Eric Hoffer
There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the passionate state of mind.

Eric Hoffer
In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.

Eric Hoffer
We can be satisfied with moderate confidence in ourselves and with a moderately good opinion of ourselves, but the faith we have in a holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising.

Eric Hoffer
Even in slight things, the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

Eric Hoffer
The original insight is most likely to come when elements stored in different compartments of the mind drift into the open, jostle one another, and now and then form new combinations.

Eric Hoffer
The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause. God wishes, said Calvin, that one should put aside all humanity when it is a question of striving for His glory..

Eric Hoffer
A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.

Eric Hoffer
When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable animated instrument which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.

Eric Hoffer
A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of
leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.

Eric Hoffer
To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.

Eric Hoffer
In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

Eric Hoffer
The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate.

Eric Hoffer
It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

Eric Hoffer
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.

Eric Hoffer
Passionate intensity may serve as a substitute for confidence.

Eric Hoffer
Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

Eric Hoffer
The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

Eric Hoffer
Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.

Eric Hoffer
To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.

Eric Hoffer
It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.

Eric Hoffer
It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.

Eric Hoffer
The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.

Eric Hoffer
Discontent is at the root of the creative process: the most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.

Eric Hoffer
The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.

Eric Hoffer