Eric Hoffer Quotes on Man (17 Quotes)


    Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story -- a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.

    The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. 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.

    It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

    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.

    There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before.


    Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.

    The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.

    Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.

    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.

    It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

    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 holy cause

    Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

    Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

    A low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men

    You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature by making him one with rocks, vegetation, and animals as by turning him into a machine. Both the natural and the mechanical are the opposite of that which is uniquely human. Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines. It is also obvious that when man domesticated animals and plants he acquired self-made machines for the production of food, power, and beauty.

    To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.

    It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.


    More Eric Hoffer Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Life - People - World - Power - Mind - Society & Civilization - Soul - Mastery & Expertise - Youth - Contemplation - Time - Actions - Facts - Abilities - Change - Belief & Faith - Sense & Perception - Compassion - View All Eric Hoffer Quotations

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