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.


Eric Hoffer

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ERIC HOFFER
In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equippe...
ERIC HOFFER
The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitaria...
ERIC HOFFER
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength
ERIC HOFFER
The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by d...
ERIC HOFFER
The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
ERIC HOFFER
It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.
ERIC HOFFER
One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of...
ERIC HOFFER
There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were,...
ERIC HOFFER
Our great weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER
It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opi...
ERIC HOFFER
There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it
ERIC HOFFER
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
ERIC HOFFER
To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
ERIC HOFFER
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the ...
ERIC HOFFER
The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of thr majority in th...
ERIC HOFFER
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that ...
ERIC HOFFER
You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, ...
ERIC HOFFER
Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And w...
ERIC HOFFER
Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragemen...
ERIC HOFFER
The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in w...
ERIC HOFFER
To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has hap...
ERIC HOFFER
It is easier to love humanity as a whole that to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER
However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we r...
ERIC HOFFER
One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ...
ERIC HOFFER
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
ERIC HOFFER