It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
“When we speak of authority at present we usually have in mind governmental authority. Actually, social order is most firm when imposed… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Every device employed to bolster individual freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of the absoluteness of power. The indications… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new;… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice - that is to say with a… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
“In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes--courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc.--can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others. The impression somehow prevails that the… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
A nation without dregs and malcontents, is orderly, decent, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
