Americans have always evinced some distrust of government, but the current situation has exacerbated this to a degree that may be unprecedented.
Eric Alterman
Related
I think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to ...
JOHN PODHORETZ Between 1776 and 1789, Americans replaced a government over them with a government under them. They ...
EDMUND MORGAN I have a very high degree of confidence that the security for this game will be unprecedented, will ...
PAUL TAGLIABUE With the current political setting, you may not always have consistency as the sheriff has to run fo...
CARROLL BURACKER We have seen a recklessness in the management of state government and finance that has been unpreced...
DOUG FORRESTER My character has a distrust of government as Big Brother, ... He doesn't see why this should be kept...
BRENT SPINER We have to be in a situation that understands the importance of some of this evidence, ... There may...
BERNARD PARKS I believe that with the help of foreign countries - and under that condition only, because they have...
EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE The learning curve that was so steep for my opponent when he came into office caused this situation ...
FREMAN HENDRIX The government has to admit, in light of yesterday's protest, that this reform cannot be implemented...
BERNARD THIBAULT I have been telling them to secure against non-structural damage ... This may not be necessary for t...
BILL PHILLIPS It certainly was not decisive in the loss of credibility for this government. But it was one instanc...
CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON Whereas previous generations had to face some unpredictability, current generations are facing unpre...
MILES ANTHONY SMITH Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bod...
EDGAR D. MITCHELL But change must always be balanced with some degree of consistency.
RON D. BURTON People may not have heard of Current TV, but they will have heard that Al Gore has a television stat...
JD LASICA Americans' distrust of the conspicuously intellectual - a habit we learned, I suppose, on the fr...
STEVEN STUCKY It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue interna...
AMY CHUA It's pretty unprecedented. No government has really done that before. I wish my grandma was alive to...
SID TAN The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have.
CRAIG GROESCHEL In case of my release, I would like to say that I am a poor man and don't have enough money to start...
ABDULLAH MUJAHID This is an unprecedented situation. It's not a done deal.
PETE CARROLL I have concluded that the current controversy has completely overshadowed our efforts to expand the ...
CHRISTOPHER BOND I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice form...
JAMES BOSWELL The biggest hurdle is those that have relevant information may be afraid to come forward, ... PC mak...
KEVIN ARQUIT So this is going to be drill!?
DEYTH BANGER This legislation will allow the federal government to enhance its law enforcement resources so that ...
ERIC STERN The people of Alabama just have a general distrust of government. They don't want to give (lawmakers...
WILLIAM STEWART There's always going to be a Mardi Gras -- at least, a lot of Americans hope there will always be, ....
JOEL KOTKIN There's always going to be a Mardi Gras - at least, a lot of Americans hope there will always be, .....
JOEL KOTKIN This may not be an ideal situation, but Eli still has had the other parts of the preseason to prepar...
AMANI TOOMER It may be that suppressing insulin production to some degree could be beneficial in such disorders.
JAMEY MARTH Katrina exacerbated an already untenable situation with respect to the price of oil on our industry,
JAMES MAY It is overreaching, bureaucratic nonsense like this that makes people distrust and resent government...
RICHARD SHELBY Do you know a magazine called the National Enquirer? In the current issue, somebody drew it to my at...
JACK BRUCE We've been involved in a wide variety of investigations, but nothing that has reached this scope. Th...
LUCILLE BAUR This big decline may seem a little on the aberrant side, and we have to be careful about it, but at ...
ANTHONY CHAN It was difficult for me to think of another situation where a court has said this to the government.
CARL TOBIAS The surface of the dispute is about pay reduction, but I think that beneath this issue there is more...
ANTHONY CHEUNG It's still unclear to what degree AOL will market the service. They may not be all that aggressive. ...
MARK MAY I though Eric and Jordan brought it, just like always. I was anxious to see how some of our guys who...
DOUG MITCHELL Everything about this show just feels like a vagina miracle to me. This may be one of the only times...
EVE ENSLER The situation as it is, is thus inequitable and will have to be addressed by government at some stag...
COLEN GARROW It's never an easy call to kill a sheep like that, ... but in this current situation, that's been on...
DANIEL PATTERSON He has taken political stands that you can imagine some of his donors or board members might have fo...
HAROLD VARMUS He has taken political stands that you can imagine some of his donors or board members might have fo...
HAROLD VARMUS Whenever you have a situation like this going on, management has to rise to the occasion. You have t...
HUBERT WILLIAMS The flooding in New Orleans represents what might be a new chapter in our history, ... The enormity ...
CHARLES FIGLEY I don't think it's ever overrated to have an established closer, but there are other ways to get it ...
JOE MADDON The founders had a strong distrust for centralized power in a federal government. So they created a ...
EZRA TAFT BENSON Not everyone has the time to be normal.
LJUPKA CVETANOVA Many people may be heartbroken, but not enough to take action.
CRAIG GROESCHEL We are going through an unprecedented situation. Romania has never had such water levels.
MADALIN MIHAILOVICI The current situation appears to be the most severe structural problem we have yet encountered.
GEORGE FULTON There's this myth that has been exacerbated by others that Starbucks means a $4 cup of coffee, w...
HOWARD SCHULTZ We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face ...
BARACK OBAMA It may simply be that New York is a state where there's more agreement that we're responsible for on...
JOEL DIEMOND I believe everyone deserves access to clean air and water, and that climate change has exacerbated t...
JIMMY GOMEZ Dumpers may not always be the heartbreakers, and the Dumpees may not always be the heartbroken. But ...
JOHN GREEN Obviously, the pressure will be on the downside of the currency until we get some degree of clarity ...
CALLUM HENDERSON We recognize that the current arrangements have to change. The existence and extent of the loans has...
FRANCIS MAUDE One thing we haven't done is go to the federal government and enlist their aid in respect to our cur...
CHRISTOPHER PREUSS Historically, the Justice Department has been Congress' ally in fighting wrongdoing in governmen...
BLAKE FARENTHOLD There's always a miracle mystery behind strange things in this world, some may be for good and some ...
NERRYMIAH SCIPIO This case creates a situation in which the government and the family in Brazil must deserve some ans...
MANOEL GOMES From the local mayor or sheriff all the way up to the president, it means people have a real distrus...
LARRY NOBLE For many Medicare beneficiaries, this is the first time that all of their medications are being syst...
JUDITH CAHILL I love you so much, so incredibly much," he went on, "and I forget when you're close to me, I forget...
CASSANDRA CLARE We have indications that some of this growth may be accelerating,
BERNIE EBBERS The revelations of the Cloyne report have brought the government, Irish Catholics, and the Vatican t...
ENDA KENNY In terms of a movement, what does a movement look like, we're seeing a very unique dynamic that I th...
JAMILA SPENCER Americans need to know that their sneakers may be inspected but that objects the size of a car are w...
ED MARKEY You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that...
CHARLES DE GAULLE To some degree, I think playing yourself has to be earned.
CAZZIE DAVID Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless.
HAROLD PINTER The thing I keep coming back to with Eric is his attitude. You always hear that message about living...
MARK MACDONALD What is potentially harmful about this whole situation is that people lose faith in the fact that th...
KATHLEEN SEBELIUS Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through yo...
GERMANY KENT Big-government proponents embrace both the power of the federal government and the idea that million...
GARY BAUER Every little kid has always wanted to be a race car driver. This gets some of that out.
DAVID ALAN GRIER I will not read the last page of novels first," I said, and then punched myself in the face.
"...
BRANDON SANDERSON The Russian revolution was to an unprecedented degree the cause of the proletariat of the whole worl...
KARL LIEBKNECHT America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who cl...
W. H. AUDEN The federal government has a responsibility to protect all Americans from potential terrorist attack...
BOB ETHERIDGE People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it....
H.L. MENCKEN Certainly the measures that have been taken [in Vietnam] will have contributed to the [improved] sit...
DIDA CONNOR This seems like the prudent thing to do. Some of this may have been a surprise to some of us, but it...
DENNIS ROSA A Brazilian citizen was killed, and we believe that someone should be considered guilty, ... This ca...
MANOEL GOMES It doesn't mean that much for the auto sector. There may be some fallout from the other suppliers, b...
TOM HOUGHTON Aetna has alluded that it may exercise this option. Express Scripts wants them to keep the current r...
ANDREW SPELLER This is the permanent tension that lies at the heart of a capitalist democracy and is exacerbated in...
TARIQ ALI Government has laid its hand on health, housing, farming, industry, commerce, education, and to an e...
RONALD REAGAN The current situation cannot last,
EHUD OLMERT Mexico is not part of South America, but of North America, in respect of the current 'crisis' situat...
GEOFFREY DENNIS It's just an outrageous situation where people have gone through this system that has been establish...
CURT GOERING The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese American...
RAND PAUL We don’t always choose our situation. But, we can always choose who we want to be in that situatio...
JOAN PILLEN It all depends on the situation, and the current situation does not require the declaration of a sta...
CHIDCHAI VANASATHIDYA Eric and Eddie have really done a lot for Brittany. She has just really blossomed. I thought Eric mi...
KATHY MCCAULEY This foundation represents a wonderful and unprecedented opportunity to help physicians in their eff...
TIM NORBECK
More Eric Alterman
As with almost every significant aspect of the Bush presidency, its handling of 9/11 was a catastrop...
ERIC ALTERMAN Over one in five American children is living in poverty, and the number is rising.
ERIC ALTERMAN If bloggers are to improve our public discourse - helping busy and usually uninformed people make se...
ERIC ALTERMAN Trends in circulation and advertising - the rise of the Internet, which has made the daily newspaper...
ERIC ALTERMAN The consequences of President Johnson's campaign of deliberate deception regarding Vietnam could...
ERIC ALTERMAN Whether people care enough about local news to pay for it is, sadly, an entirely different question ...
ERIC ALTERMAN The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics -...
ERIC ALTERMAN One of the many, many salutary aspects of Barack Obama's impending presidential nomination is th...
ERIC ALTERMAN More and more, Democrats are starting to worry they that they have a more um, colorful version of Ji...
ERIC ALTERMAN Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's 'Courant', it no longer requires a dy...
ERIC ALTERMAN We sometimes find ourselves at a loss as to whether we should be more appalled at the Bush Administr...
ERIC ALTERMAN It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen,
ERIC ALTERMAN never let my right hand know what my left hand does.
ERIC ALTERMAN Americans continue to suffer from a notoriously short attention span. They get mad as hell with reas...
ERIC ALTERMAN Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy requires a struggle merely to force the...
ERIC ALTERMAN As a parent and a citizen, I'll take a Bill Gates (or Warren Buffett) over Steve Jobs every time...
ERIC ALTERMAN I am deeply devoted to the 27,000 songs I can take anywhere on my iPod Classic as well as the exquis...
ERIC ALTERMAN Liberals believe that they can't get a fair shake from the media anymore.
ERIC ALTERMAN But particularly when the media profess to strive toward objectivity, gatekeepers play a crucial rol...
ERIC ALTERMAN If newspapers were a baseball team, they would be the Mets - without the hope for those folks at the...
ERIC ALTERMAN Fox News is nothing if not impressive. No matter how harsh the criticism it endures, the network som...
ERIC ALTERMAN Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events...
ERIC ALTERMAN The myth of the liberal media empowers conservatives to control debate in the United States to the p...
ERIC ALTERMAN Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it's easy t...
ERIC ALTERMAN To own the dominant, or only, newspaper in a mid-sized American city was, for many decades, a kind o...
ERIC ALTERMAN Veteran print editors and reporters at places like the 'Times' and 'The New Yorker' ...
ERIC ALTERMAN Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us.
ERIC ALTERMAN Ironically, tendency to ignore inconvenient facts and unwelcome evidence is actually President Reaga...
ERIC ALTERMAN Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstandin...
ERIC ALTERMAN This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the med...
ERIC ALTERMAN Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda ...
ERIC ALTERMAN Obama, like Carter, is reacting to warning signs by seeking to split the difference between dispirit...
ERIC ALTERMAN The Economist is undoubtedly the smartest weekly newsmagazine in the English language. I always look...
ERIC ALTERMAN Stylistically speaking, Barack Obama could hardly be further from Jimmy Carter if he really had been...
ERIC ALTERMAN Liberals do not appear to address potential solutions with anything like the far right's aura of...
ERIC ALTERMAN We live in a media world simultaneously obsessed with technology and personality.
ERIC ALTERMAN American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.
ERIC ALTERMAN Much of what Tea Party candidates claimed about the world and the global economy during the 2010 ele...
ERIC ALTERMAN While history never repeats itself, political patterns do.
ERIC ALTERMAN No one really won in this constitution. It left almost everything vague. Everyone played to a tie bu...
JON ALTERMAN My guess is that the U.S. will say we are doing what we can. The Saudis will say please do more and ...
JON ALTERMAN Suddenly it looks like the policy is not tough diplomacy, but the path to war.
JON ALTERMAN Whatever the disarray in the Knesset, whatever's going on there, he's going to make a deal in the na...
JON ALTERMAN The roadmap is inoperative and nothing has replaced it.
JON ALTERMAN It's a 12-step program. The first step is to admit you have a problem. They still have 11 steps to g...
JON ALTERMAN Arabs will turn round and point out the United States gives billions of dollars to Israel. It's just...
JON ALTERMAN This was totally unprecedented - a live interchange with no questions given in advance.
JON ALTERMAN Most countries in the Gulf do not have to be persuaded that a nuclear Iran is a threat to them. But ...
JON ALTERMAN Everybody's going to fight for the mantle of Ariel Sharon. I think partly because he covered such a ...
JON ALTERMAN We are backed up. We are addressing those issues.
BARBARA ALTERMAN As long as it was [kept] in the unincorporated area, the county could control the growth.
BARBARA ALTERMAN The relocation study is intended to show and demonstrate that there are alternate places to locate p...
BARBARA ALTERMAN We are not trying to set up people to fail.
BARBARA ALTERMAN A lot of them are pending, in the works.
BARBARA ALTERMAN You constantly hear about voter fraud... but you don't see huge amounts of vote fraud out there.
ERIC HOLDER We must never stop fighting for a vision of American democracy in which we strive for and encourage ...
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN Children are the keys of paradise.
ERIC HOFFER It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
ERIC HOFFER Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and ...
ERIC HOFFER The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
ERIC HOFFER It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to le...
ERIC HOFFER Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us...
ERIC HOFFER Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
ERIC HOFFER We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
ERIC HOFFER One of the things I learned is that you've got to deal with the underlying social problems if yo...
ERIC HOLDER I've been hearing this since I first joined the Reds organization, that I'm going to be the ...
ERIC DAVIS I can understand why a single parent, working two jobs, would find it easier to stop at McDonald'...
ERIC SCHLOSSER Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achie...
ERIC BUTTERWORTH Consultant: any ordinary guy more than fifty miles from home.
ERIC SEVAREID If you sequence a cancerous tumor, you should be able to tailor the therapy according to the root ca...
ERIC TOPOL A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of anxiety, but a Kokoschka painting, or a Schiele self-por...
ERIC KANDEL I want to be remembered for my poop jokes. Those are the most important kind.
ERIC ANDRE A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses, but talks about what he'll do if he wins...
ERIC BERNE Google was founded to get information to everybody. A by-product of that strategy is that we invente...
ERIC SCHMIDT When someone makes a claim against the state, that person must legally verify that the facts in the ...
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have ...
ERIC HOLDER Television is a lot of fun. It's faster-paced. The schedule is really desirable, I guess. But as...
ERIC DANE It takes a lot of energy to be negative. You have to work at it. But smiling is painless. I'd ra...
ERIC DAVIS I like Velvet Underground, but I was never really hardcore into them. I like them, and I like Nico, ...
ERIC ANDRE If someone is too perfect they won't look good. Imperfection is important.
ERIC CANTONA I love cheese and biscuits, the stronger the better.
ERIC BRISTOW Why should citizenship be a matter of birth? The premise held by those who want to end birthright ci...
ERIC LIU I am a Buddhist, therefore I should not be collecting anything - however, I have a collection of Bud...
ERIC RIPERT First paying gig, I got 20 bucks. I played at some really weird venue. I don't remember the venu...
ERIC ANDRE Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it...
ERIC BROWN When Bryan Price taught me how to throw a changeup, he made me see myself. All my life, I've bee...
ERIC LIU I have two bowls of confidence for breakfast each morning.
ERIC BRISTOW If you are going to make a change, make it big and bold. Walk up to the biggest guy on the block, st...
ERIC SHINSEKI With breathtaking rapidity, we are destroying all that was lovely to look at and turning America int...
ERIC SEVAREID You know, you grow up with the image of John Travolta being super cool - 'Saturday Night Fever,&...
ERIC STOLTZ The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flowby t...
ERIC HOFFER The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When t...
ERIC HOFFER How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!
ERIC HOFFER There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for...
ERIC HOFFER It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.
ERIC HOFFER I have a Tinder account. Now I've done Bumble, and I've tried this other one, and the way I ...
ERIC STONESTREET At Tenafly High, I was lucky to have some dedicated teachers; I'm especially indebted to my calc...
ERIC MASKIN If your goal is to make money, becoming an entrepreneur is a sucker's bet. Sure, some entreprene...
ERIC RIES All I ever wanted to do was get a great job on a TV show. When I read 'Modern Family' and st...
ERIC STONESTREET My wife is a real camper; it's a nice way to bond.
ERIC MCCORMACK Great businessmen are creators.
ERIC CANTONA I'll tell you one thing about me: I'm very private. I always have been private. People think...
ERIC DICKERSON Within that dream of working with your partner, you want to be able to separate and have a home life...
ERIC WINTER There is no greater country on Earth for entrepreneurship than America. In every category, from the ...
ERIC RIES If what I've been told is true - and I believe it is, General David Petraeus, a commander with s...
ERIC MASSA There are certain mutations you can find across cancers in different organs.
ERIC TOPOL There are estimates that 2 to 3 percent of cancers in the U.S. each year are engendered by exposure ...
ERIC TOPOL I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.
ERIC CLAPTON With vocal and choral music, first and foremost, it's the text. Not only do I need to serve the ...
ERIC WHITACRE There's a roots nature to Appalachia - the origins of folk and bluegrass. I know guys there who ...
ERIC CHURCH A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a sym...
ERIC HOFFER There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
ERIC HOFFER Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in ...
ERIC HOFFER The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger ...
ERIC HOFFER Sharks have been swimming the oceans unchallenged for thousands of years; chances are, the species t...
ERIC GELMAN Lightning is the shorthand of a storm, and tells of chaos.
ERIC MACKAY The Boomers will eventually have to accept that it is not possible to stay forever young or to stop ...
ERIC LIU When a bank calls in a loan, it obviously hurts the customer in question. But it also adversely affe...
ERIC MASKIN It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer f...
ERIC HOFFER Mass is resistance to motion.
ERIC PARSLOW One of the keys to wealth is to understand why & how the distance from 1 to 1 million is greater tha...
ERIC PARSLOW The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
ERIC HOFFER Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to...
ERIC HOFFER Whether it is an attempt to bomb the New York City subway system, an attempt to bring down an airpla...
ERIC HOLDER 'The Simpsons' is like Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando or Richard Pryor: Comedy couldn't...
ERIC ANDRE The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER Anything and everything, physical or otherwise, is defined by its absence.
ERIC PARSLOW Life is the dynamic, creative edge of reality.
ERIC PARSLOW Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
ERIC HOFFER The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they follow. Bigness means weakness.
ERIC SEVAREID The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.
ERIC SEVAREID One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of...
ERIC HOFFER The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in w...
ERIC HOFFER Remembering is something God asks us to do over �...
ERIC IRIVUZUMUGABE Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
ERIC HOFFER The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their ...
ERIC HOFFER The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as ...
ERIC HOFFER Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in l...
ERIC HOFFER Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for se...
ERIC HOFFER Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions ...
ERIC HOFFER The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither ac...
ERIC HOFFER As I railed on and on, I became increasingly energied and excited by my own misery and misanthropy u...
ERIC WEINER For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman ...
ERIC AMBLER Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo...
ERIC WEINER It's my duty as a human being to be pissed off
ERIC BOGOSIAN I know what I want to hear. I want to hear the "Believe it or Not" song. I want to play that shit lo...
ERIC SPITZNAGEL The chief cause of problems is solutions.
ERIC SEVAREID When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common...
ERIC HOFFER Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring...
ERIC HOFFER Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. For we can...
ERIC HOFFER Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would i...
ERIC HOFFER To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain e...
ERIC HOFFER For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be....
ERIC ROTH The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer se...
ERIC BERNE It is a well known fact that Abraham Lincoln spent much of his spare time visiting wounded soldiers ...
ERIC FONER Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn'...
ERIC IDLE Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
ERIC HOFFER It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposi...
ERIC HOFFER There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmar...
ERIC HOFFER The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.
ERIC HOFFER It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
ERIC HOFFER It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
ERIC HOFFER It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create someth...
ERIC HOFFER Lightning is the shorthand of a storm, and tells of chaos.
ERIC MACKAY The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist...
ERIC HOFFER It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and presen...
ERIC HOFFER Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stu...
ERIC HOFFER An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anyth...
ERIC HOFFER Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
ERIC HOFFER No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need p...
ERIC HOFFER One of the best things to do sometimes is simply to be.
ERIC BUTTERWORTH The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of t...
ERIC HOFFER In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find them...
ERIC HOFFER I loved learning, it was school I hated. I used to cut school to go learn something.
ERIC JENSEN It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
ERIC HOFFER Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
ERIC HOFFER The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things o...
ERIC HOFFER The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim a...
ERIC HOFFER We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
ERIC HOFFER You've got to create a dream. You've got to uphold the dream. If you can't, go back to the factory o...
ERIC BURDON If you think you can do it, you can.
ERIC LINDROS Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and...
ERIC HOFFER Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about o...
ERIC HOFFER The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine h...
ERIC HOFFER Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
GOLNIK ERIC We don't change what we are, we change what we think what we are.
ERIC BUTTERWORTH A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
ERIC HOFFER There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the pre...
ERIC HOFFER The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword an...
ERIC HOFFER We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every...
ERIC HOFFER Competing with an other is exhilarating, challenging, and healthy. That is what Games are for. When...
ERIC PARSLOW A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-...
ERIC HOFFER Absence of communication between necessarily linked parties ensures eventual conflict.
ERIC PARSLOW The notion of implied meaning is the root of misunderstanding.
ERIC PARSLOW To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
ERIC HOFFER