Kevin K > Kevin's Quotes

“I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—‘t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.”
― John Keats

“Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but, most important, it finds homes for us everywhere.”
― John Keats, Books and Reading: A Book of Quotations

“Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.”
― John Keats, The Complete Poems

“Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, ‘to be free from freedom.’ It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes--courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc.--can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
Nature has no compassion. It is, in the words of William Blake, "a creation that groans, living on the death; where fish and bird and beast and tree and metal and stone live by devouring." Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“We feel free when we escape, even if it be from the frying pan into the fire.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else--we are the busiest people in the world.”
― Eric Hoffer

“What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Empathy, alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.”
― Eric Hoffer

“...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.”
― Eric Hoffer

“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.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
― Eric Hoffer

“It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs." -”
― Eric Hoffer

“Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.”
― Eric Hoffer

“It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts.”
― Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind: And Other Aphorisms

“Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power”
― Eric Hoffer

“In times of change the learners will inherit the earth, while the knowers will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth. It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. […] The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds. […] If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine. When some part of a doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.”
― Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change

“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.     142”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“There are no truths, only moments of claryty passing for answers.”
― Montaigne

“Let the tutor not merely require a verbal account of what the boy has been taught but the meaning and the substance of it: let him judge how the child has profited from it not from the evidence of his memory but from that of his life. Let him take what the boy has just learned and make him show him dozens of different aspects of it and then apply it to just as many different subjects, in order to find out whether he has really grasped it and make it part of himself, judging the boy's progress by what Plato taught about education. Spewing up food exactly as you have swallowed it is evidence of a failure to digest and assimilate it; the stomach has not done its job if, during concoction, it fails to change the substance and the form of what it is given.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.”
― Michel de Montaigne