Eric Hoffer Quotes

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.

I should like [people] to like the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. and They only like to do the collective thing.

Imitation is very easy, and the whole culture and society depends on imitation. Everybody is telling you how to behave, and whatsoever they are teaching you is nothing but imitation. Religious people - the so-called religious people, the priests, the theologians - they are also teaching you, 'Be like Jesus, be like Buddha, be like Krishna.' Nobody ever tells you, 'Just be yourself' - nobody. Everybody is against you, it seems. Nobody allows you to be yourself, nobody gives you any freedom. You can be in this world, but you must imitate somebody.

Never follow anybody else's idea - that is very dangerous because you will become imitative. Always follow your own nature, self-nature; only then will you attain to freedom. It is better to die following one's nature than to live following somebody's else's nature, because that will be a pseudo life. To die following one's nature is beautiful, because that death too will be authentic.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

I see the world become so uniform. Everybody has to be the same. I like people who are different.

I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything.

There was no one in particular I really tried to copy.

Unless you hit your television with a sledgehammer, you're not going to be able to be an individual.

Don't look at all at what other people are doing. Think of what you're doing as completely fresh because if you imitate you're dead.

I do not want to work to correspond to an image.

There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn't.

Society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

In an over-organized society, the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul.

People have certain ideas of what they think you should be, and I have fought that categorisation my whole life.

I certainly wouldn't want to be a Mini Me of any of the people whose footsteps I've followed in.

I don't want to be anyone's mimic.

I like characters in life, generally; I don't like to see a collection modelled on a homogeneous look. That terrifies me.

Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies? That meddling ape imitation, as soon as we come to years of indiscretion, (so let me speak,) snatches the pen, and blots out nature's mark of separation, cancels her kind intention, destroys all mental individuality. The lettered world no longer consists of singulars: it is a medley, a mass; and a hundred books, at bottom, are but one.

Each individual's way is going to be different. Never follow anybody. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. Once you start following somebody else, you become a carbon copy. You become an imitation.

People have only one way to be.

Most people are other people.

Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.

To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.