Life & Wisdom Quote by Eric Hoffer

Hero worship isn’t just naïveté in Hoffer’s telling; it’s premeditation. He puts a scalpel into what usually passes for generosity: our habit of inflating people’s reputations. The line works because it flips the moral valence. Overestimation sounds like kindness, optimism, even hope. Hoffer insists it can be a down payment on cruelty, an investment strategy in emotional returns: the later satisfaction of “cutting them down to size.”

That “probably” is doing more than modesty. It signals a writer who distrusts purity narratives about human motives, especially in crowds. The subtext is social, not merely psychological. Overpraise becomes a communal setup, a way groups manufacture dramatic reversals. Build the pedestal high enough and the fall becomes entertainment, proof of the crowd’s discernment, a reassurance that no one gets to outrun the collective.

The phrase “as it were” adds a faint, wry detachment, as if Hoffer is watching us perform this ritual from a half-step back. “Laying up” echoes the language of thrift and saving; malice here isn’t a sudden impulse, it’s stored. Even “cutting” has a tactile bluntness, hinting at the relish in reduction, the pleasure of resizing someone to fit our preferred scale.

Context matters: Hoffer wrote in the shadow of mass movements and their appetite for icons and betrayals. The quote anticipates today’s hype-and-backlash cycle, where celebrities, politicians, and even ordinary people go viral first as saviors, then as scandals. He’s not warning against admiration; he’s warning that some admiration is just the opening act of condemnation.