Eric Hoffer Quotes

What faith has not been used by demagogues as a club over somebody's head?

... force is the natural ally of superstition, and superstition knows it well.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Redemption is promised at the low price of surrender of your critical faculties.

Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion.

Since I was 9, I'd been told what to say, what to think.

Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves; when that right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing.

More and more, we’re willing to give up certain elements of a personal autonomy to gain greater control over others.

If they can talk to you over a secure telephone line, then you have to do what they want.

Fear works. It is more effective than any drug, tactic, or torture device.

The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.

For your own good" is a persuasive argument that will eventually make man agree to his own destruction.

I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

Once a person insists on how you are to think he immediately begins to insist on how you are to behave.

We must form men so that they can only will what we wish them to will.

Terrorists have hijacked our religion.

Religion is all profit. They have no merchandise to buy, no commissions to pay, and no refunds to make for unsatisfactory service and results....Their commodity is fear.

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.

… the religion’s [Islam’s] teachings don’t involve acts of terrorism unless — as with every other religion — leaders manipulate the teachings to make whatever they want.

Religion is like a personal computer. You let people in if you want to... We're all gods.

I don't have an image. Don't give me one. I want no image to have to uphold.

I don't deal well with being told what to wear and sit on a mark. It just feels like my soul is being ripped out.

Of course it would disgust me to tell anyone how to live.

Power manipulates the innocent and terror is born.

It is necessary for men to be deceived in religion.