Quotes from Eric Hoffer

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.

Sering dikatakan orang bahwa bakat memberi banyak kesempatan untuk maju. Namun semangat besarlah yang kerap memberi kesempatan, dan bahkan memberi banyak bakat.

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.

The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man's reason and the boundless range of his intelligence. Never, says de Tocqueville, had humanity been prouder of itself nor had it ever so much faith in its own omnipotence.

Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo.

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 movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice.

Action is a unifier.

To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.

The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.

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 persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor. (Eric Hoffer 1902-1983)

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.

The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors that promote self-sacrifice is that we are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for," they do not feel like fighting. People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause.

The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death.

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts.

If anything ail a man," says Thoreau, "so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming—the world."3

They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually their innermost desire is for an end to the "free for all." They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society. 29

We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his own holy cause.

The intellectual cannot operate at room temperature.

The decline of handicrafts in modern times is perhaps one of the causes for the rise of frustration

Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.