Eric Hoffer Thinking Quotations

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

To learn you need a certain degree of confidence, not too much and not too little. If you have too little confidence, you will think you can't learn. If you have too much, you will think you don't have to learn.

No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.

Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.

people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.

People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.

The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.

There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.

A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.

The superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out; it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility.

What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.

To think out a problem is not unlike drawing a caricature. You have to exaggerate the salient point and leave out that which is not typical. "To illustrate a principle ," says Bagehot , "you must exaggerate much and you must omit much." As to the quantity of absolute truth in a thought : it seems to me the more comprehensive and unobjectionable a thought becomes, the more clumsy and unexciting it gets. I like half-truths of a certain kind they are interesting and they stimulate.

Modern man is weighed down more by the burden of responsibility than by the burden of sin . We think him more a savior who shoulders our responsibilities than him who shoulders our sins. If instead of making decisions we have but to obey and do our duty, we feel it as a sort of salvation.

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.