747 Quotes by Eric Hoffer

Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals; yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.

The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American's hatred for a fellow American.is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners.Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. ... Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are "vowed" to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor. The all-seeing eye of a totalitarian regime is usually the watchful eye of the next-door neighbor. In a Communist state love of neighbor may be classed as counter-revolutionary.

There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the passionate state of mind.

Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.

In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo 's definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern