Eric Hoffer Quotes
Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
Hoffer, Eric. The Passionate State of Mind, and Other Aphorisms. Harper & Brothers, 1955.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
Perhaps the most famous quotation in all of Political Science is this one. What is fascinating is that 74 years earlier, Shelly, the most famous of the English Poets expressed the same idea in one of his great poems. See {627920}. The last sentence of this quote is often excluded.
Iturbide, known also as Agustin I, was the first Emperor of Mexico who was executed by a firing squad.
Napoleon had been a great supporter of Napoleon, but had become disillusioned.
The Priest was the right wing demagogic radio host of his day. Virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Black, he was threatened with excommunication by the Catholic Church, which finally ordered him to cease us weekly radio show and stop the political hate.
Eric Hoffer was an American moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer (1951), was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that The Ordeal of Change was his finest work.
