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From Quotes by Eric Hoffer
- Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter.…
- The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless…
- Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
- The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money.…
- A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness…
- The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
- Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished…
- The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness…
- 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…
- The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. When we ascribe the success of a…
- The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.
- A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own…
- We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
- When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for.…
- We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
- The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
- With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of…
- Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
- Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
- To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
- The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant…
- The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
- When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
- Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
- The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
More From Quotes
- Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise. — Hannah Arendt
- By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality. — Hannah Arendt
- No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has… — Hannah Arendt
- Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in… — Hannah Arendt
- Aside from a handful of guys boxing is missing the good trainers, that's why our sport is so in the air now… — Alexis Arguello
- From heresy, frenzy and jealousy, good Lord deliver me. — Ludovico Ariosto
- As far as we are concerned, we are ready to leave today, tomorrow, at any time, to join the people of Haiti,… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always.… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- In 1994, when I went back to Haiti from exile, we established a Commission for Truth and Justice and Reconciliation. I passed… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of… — Aristophanes
- At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. — Aristotle