Eric Hoffer cytaty

strona 4

Sections 128 - 129
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Kontekst: Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.... It is thus with most of us: we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

Section 28
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Kontekst: Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.

Section 35
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Kontekst: Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not organically part of us, while self-esteem derives from the potentialities and achievements of the self. We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body or possessions. There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is sensitive and uncompromising. The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection.
It is true that when pride releases energies and serves as a spur to achievement, it can lead to a reconciliation with the self and the attainment of genuine self-esteem.

Israel's Peculiar Position (1968)
Kontekst: The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese — and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.
Arnold J. Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Entry (1960)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Kontekst: Total innovation is a flight from comparison and also from imitation. Those who discover things for themselves and express them in their own way are not overly bothered by the fact that others have already discovered these things — have even discovered them over and over again — and have expressed what they found in all manner of ways.

Section 241
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Źródło: The Passionate State of Mind: And Other Aphorisms

Section 70
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Section 33
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Section 13; often the final portion of this is quoted alone as: "Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Kontekst: 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 them into puppets.
There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience; a readiness to attempt the impossible; a bias for simple solutions — to cut the knot rather than unravel it; the viewing of compromise as surrender; the tendency to manipulate people and "experiment with blood."
Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Section 10
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

Section 222
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Section 62
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

Section 50
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Źródło: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Section 178
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Section 32 <!-- also quoted in On Becoming a Leader (1989) by Warren G. Bennis, p. 189 -->
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Wariant: In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Kontekst: The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Wariant: You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.

Źródło: Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), p. 54 of a 1974 edition

Źródło: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements