Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
ERIC HOFFER, The Passionate State of Mind
Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
ERIC HOFFER, Reflections on the Human Condition
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER, The Passionate State of Mind: And Other Aphorisms
The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new--whether it be the settlement of new lands or the initiation of new ways of life--is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.
It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.
ERIC HOFFER, The Passionate State of Mind
The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow--by the tilt of the social landscape.
ERIC HOFFER, The Temper of Our Time
The all-seeing eye of a totalitarian regime is usually the watchful eye of the next-door neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER, The Ordeal of Change
Rabid suspicion has nothing in it of skepticism. The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
ERIC HOFFER, The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms
The impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant, and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
ERIC HOFFER, The Ordeal of Change
The fabulous effects ascribed to propaganda have no greater foundation in fact than the fall of the walls of Jericho ascribed to the blast of Joshua's trumpets.
ERIC HOFFER, The True Believer
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
ERIC HOFFER, Between the Devil and the Dragon
It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power -- power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.
ERIC HOFFER, The True Believer
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
ERIC HOFFER, New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1971
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
ERIC HOFFER, The Passionate State Of Mind and Other Aphorisms
They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.
ERIC HOFFER, Reflections on the Human Condition
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER, The Ordeal of Change
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience--the knowledge that our might deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or "of those that are to be." We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds, in the opinion and imagination of others.
ERIC HOFFER, The True Believer
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
