« All Human Quotes · Eric Hoffer's Page
Human Quotes by Eric Hoffer
- Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
- The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.
- The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.
- 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.
- However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human…
- The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human…
- The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human…
- All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
- 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…
- Give people pride and they'll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction of barter: we…
- In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final…
- In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
- 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…
- 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.…
- Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human…
- It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills,…
- Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over…
- When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
- The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn…
- It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
More Human Quotes
- All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. — Aristotle
- We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for… — Hannah Arendt
- When you care about human beings, you do your best to not repress and to not let people to repress and to… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of living well, which all men desire; all acts are… — Hannah Arendt
- I don't like to get angry. It doesn't make me feel good. It is very human, but it's also a loss of… — Steve Carell
- Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet… — Friedrich Nietzsche
- Lao Tsu found Taoism easy to reconcile withthe world of human beings, which is interesting because with all the nature imagery, one… — Frederick Lenz
- Guns are evil! And very little good comes from the availability of a bullet designed to kill human beings! — Mackenzie Astin