22 Eric Hoffer Quotes on Truth

Eric Hoffer quotes on truth

20. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.

21. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.

22. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: '[They] pray not only for [their] daily bread, but also for [their] daily illusion.' The rule seems to be that those who find difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.

29. The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates only into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already simmering in the minds of his hearers. he echoes their innermost feelings. Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already 'know.'

42. To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats - we know it not.

43. The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

45. We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

46. When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

61. Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.

102. Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.

103. Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.

104. An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

105. It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.

120. 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.

125. I am more and more convinced that taking life over-seriously is a frivolous thing. There is an affected self-dramatizing in the brooding over one's prospects and destiny. The trifling attitude of an Ecclesiastes is essentially sober and serious. It is in closer touch with the so-called eternal truths than are the most penetrating metaphysical probing and the most sensitive poetic insights.

130. To think for oneself is not only, as Gide said, counterrevolutionary but also apostasy and, at certain times, treason.

133. It is precisely because we can never really know ourselves, but only guess, that we are so vehement about the good and the evil ascribed to us by others. In maintaining ourselves against all comers, we are maintaining something that is unknown, uncertain, and never wholly provable. We need a chorus of consent, and we are engaged in an unceasing proselytizing campaign in our own behalf.

134. How terribly hard and almost impossible it is to tell the truth. More than anything else, the artist in us prevents us from telling aught as it really happened. We deal with the truth as the cook deals with meat and vegetables.

140. We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.

158. I could never figure out - or probably did not take the trouble to figure out - what the great philosophical problems are about. The momentous statements I come across are at best a storm in a teacup. There are quite a number of people who have a vested interest in the stuff, make a noble living out of it, and they conspire with one another to keep it alive.

188. Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

212. Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.