Book detail: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book compiles a selection of Eric Hoffer's most insightful essays and aphorisms, offering readers a glimpse into his profound thoughts on human nature, society, and the complexities of the world.
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“Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“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.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. According to Renan, "The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men."”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“...the majority of people cannot endure the bareness and futility of their lives unless they have some ardent dedication, or some passionate pursuit in which they can lose themselves.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day; we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else--we are the busiest people in the world.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the remarkable fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“There is a time when the word "eventually" has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“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.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“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.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
“Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.”
Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer