Eric Hoffer Quotes About Talent
-
We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
→ -
The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.
→ -
The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow - by the tilt of the social landscape.
→ -
Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. We join a mass movement to escape from individual responsibility, or, in the words of an 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?
→ -
It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
→ -
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.
→ -
The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.
→ -
In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them
→ -
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.
→ -
Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
→ -
Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
→ -
Unless a man has 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."
→ -
They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.
→ -
Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.
→ -
...That genius is a rare exception (:) It's not true. Talent and genius have been wasted on enormous scale throughout our history; this is all I know for sure.
→ -
Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals; yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.
→
Related Authors
-
Karen Horney Psychoanalyst -
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Professor -
Edmund Burke Statesman -
Eric Sevareid Journalist -
Anna Freud Psychologist -
Immanuel Kant Philosopher -
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Author -
Nassim Nicholas Taleb Author -
Michel de Montaigne Writer -
Eric Berne Author -
-
Erich Fromm Psychologist -
Sidney Poitier Actor -
David D. Burns Author -
Thomas Sowell Economist -
Matt Labash Journalist -
William James Philosopher -
Stanislav Grof Psychiatrist -
John Derbyshire Writer -
M. Stanton Evans Journalist