Eric Hoffer Quotes

I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me.

With a fractured sense of self, we come to depend on what people feed back to us - often mediated through social networks - not what we are. We have complex identities but may become less able to act as a subject - confident in what we really are.

We all have our own ideas of who we are that may or may not be justified, and you can really find out a heck of a lot more accurately from the people around an individual.

Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.

In a way, you kind of get caught up in whatever image of yourself you think is out there.

The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.

As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.

Any description of a person that comes from the outside is very hard to deal with. People don't like being summarised. It's nice to receive a compliment, but it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.

I can't control what people think. They know who I am.

I never consciously set out to model myself after Upton Sinclair.

You should never step outside of your life and look at it like it's this malleable thing you can shape so that people view it a certain way.

If you start trying to figure out yourself from the image everyone has of you, you run into a dead end.

I am not aware of my public image or what people think of me. I don't evaluate myself that way.

I am not really trying to act like my dad.

Without its daydreams, the self is apt to shrink down to the size and shape of the estimation of others

If you go too far down the rabbit hole of what people think about you, it can change everything about who you are.

In terms of what people think about me, the truth of the matter is, I guess I care to a certain extent, but not enough to try to go out in the public and plead for some kind of new understanding of me.

If I were a chocolate I'd eat myself. Seriously, we're all interested in ourselves and what other people are saying about us to some extent.

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.

I don't have all that great an awareness of how people see me in life. I don't find myself thinking about it a lot.

I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience.

If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror - from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us - our view of ourselves is like the reflection in a crazy mirror room at the carnival.

Self-respecting people do not care to peep at their reflections in unexpected mirrors, or to see themselves as others see them.

I want to look at myself the way I do on purpose, because if you aggrandize and try to look at yourself the way a fan does or the way a reviewer does or the way - God bless them, they all got a right to, everybody's got a right to an opinion about it.

I've never thought of myself as just an actor.