Eric Hoffer Quotes About Originality

Quotes about: Originality

• Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

  Eric Hoffer

  Originality, Shows

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

• When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest. A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness.

  Eric Hoffer

  People, Giving, Originality

  'Passionate State of Mind' (1955) p. 21

• 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.

  Eric Hoffer

  Tinkering, Matter, Chance

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

• Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.

  Eric Hoffer

  Originality, Protest, Deliberate

  'Passionate State of Mind' (1955) p. 21

• It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.

  Eric Hoffer

  Fate, Achievement, Orthodoxy

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

• The original insight is most likely to come when elements stored in different compartments of the mind drift into the open, jostle one another, and now and then form new combinations.

  Eric Hoffer

  Mind, Different, Elements

  Eric Hoffer (1963). “The Ordeal of Change”

• To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.

  Eric Hoffer

  Serious, Originality, Underestimate

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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