Eric Hoffer Quotes About Belief

Quotes about: Belief

• Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.

  Eric Hoffer

  Believe, Knowledge, Calumny Is

  Eric Hoffer (1955). “The passionate state of mind, and other aphorisms”

• Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.

  Eric Hoffer

  Devil, Movement, Libertarian

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

• However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.

  Eric Hoffer

  Life, Believe, Eye

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

• It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.

  Eric Hoffer

  Belief, Realizing, Believer

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

• To be ruthless requires belief that our life on earth is but a brief prelude to an afterlife, or a temporary sacrifice before some utopia can be instituted.
  Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

  Eric Hoffer

  Moving, Sacrifice, Skills

  1955 The Passionate State of Mind.

• The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth

  Eric Hoffer

  Effectiveness, Profound, Sublime

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

• Conservatism is sometimes a symptom of sterility. Those who have nothing in them that can grow and develop must cling to what they have in beliefs, ideas and possessions. The sterile radical, too, is basically conservative. He is afraid to let go of the ideas and beliefs he picked up in his youth lest his life be seen as empty and wasted.

  Eric Hoffer

  Letting Go, Ideas, Society

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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