Top 100 Eric Hoffer Quotes
#1. The superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out; it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility.
Eric Hoffer
#2. Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
Eric Hoffer
#3. In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.
Eric Hoffer
#4. Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
Eric Hoffer
#5. A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.
Eric Hoffer
#6. We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer
#7. That genius is a rare exception ( It's not true. Talent and genius have been wasted on enormous scale throughout our history; this is all I know for sure.
Eric Hoffer
#8. For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.
Eric Hoffer
#9. To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.
Eric Hoffer
#10. The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
Eric Hoffer
#11. The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
Eric Hoffer
#12. We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
#13. The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
Eric Hoffer
#14. Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.
Eric Hoffer
#15. A compilation of what outstanding people said or wrote at the age of 20 would make a collection of asinine pronouncements.
Eric Hoffer
#16. That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.
Eric Hoffer
#17. Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
Eric Hoffer
#18. Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
Eric Hoffer
#19. Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.
Eric Hoffer
#20. The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.
Eric Hoffer
#21. It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.
Eric Hoffer
#22. Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
Eric Hoffer
#23. Modern man is weighed down more by the burden of responsibility than by the burden of sin . We think him more a savior who shoulders our responsibilities than him who shoulders our sins. If instead of making decisions we have but to obey and do our duty, we feel it as a sort of salvation.
Eric Hoffer
#24. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer
#25. There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
Eric Hoffer
#26. When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
Eric Hoffer
#27. Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.
Eric Hoffer
#28. There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
Eric Hoffer
#29. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
Eric Hoffer
#30. There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it
Eric Hoffer
#31. We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.
Eric Hoffer
#32. Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.
Eric Hoffer
#33. We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
Eric Hoffer
#34. Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Eric Hoffer
#35. There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.
Eric Hoffer
#36. Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
Eric Hoffer
#37. A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
Eric Hoffer
#38. Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
Eric Hoffer
#39. There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses.
Eric Hoffer
#40. A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
Eric Hoffer
#41. Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.
Eric Hoffer
#42. Rudeness is the weak man's limitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer
#43. There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.
Eric Hoffer
#44. One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
Eric Hoffer
#45. Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope.
Eric Hoffer
#46. The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
Eric Hoffer
#47. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have something worth fighting for,they do not feel like fighting.
Eric Hoffer
#48. Those of little faith are of little hatred.
Eric Hoffer
#49. Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.
Eric Hoffer
#50. The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flowby the tilt of the social landscape.
Eric Hoffer
#51. The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
#52. It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
Eric Hoffer
#53. A plant needs roots in order to grow. With man it is the other way around: only when he grows does he have roots and feels at home in the world.
Eric Hoffer
#54. The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth
Eric Hoffer
#55. Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
Eric Hoffer
#56. Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
Eric Hoffer
#57. A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
Eric Hoffer
#58. It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.
Eric Hoffer
#59. The self-confidence of even the consistently successful is never absolute. They are never sure that they know all the ingredients which go into the making of their success. The
Eric Hoffer
#60. The education explosion is producing a vast number of people who want to live significant, important lives but lack the ability to satisfy this craving for importance by individual achievement. The country is being swamped with nobodies who want to be somebodies.
Eric Hoffer
#61. We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Eric Hoffer
#62. The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
Eric Hoffer
#63. We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us.
Eric Hoffer
#64. First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
Eric Hoffer
#65. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone
Eric Hoffer
#66. Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
Eric Hoffer
#67. If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
Eric Hoffer
#68. We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.
Eric Hoffer
#69. Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.
Eric Hoffer
#70. A good sentence is a key . It unlocks the mind of the reader.
Eric Hoffer
#71. Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .
Eric Hoffer
#72. If anything ail a man," says Thoreau, "so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even ... he forthwith sets about reforming - the world."3
Eric Hoffer
#73. In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
Eric Hoffer
#74. People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.
Eric Hoffer
#75. It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
#76. We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.
Eric Hoffer
#77. In the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
Eric Hoffer
#78. A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
Eric Hoffer
#79. How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
Eric Hoffer
#80. Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
Eric Hoffer
#81. We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
Eric Hoffer
#82. There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.
Eric Hoffer
#84. It is not at all simple to understand the simple.
Eric Hoffer
#85. Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
Eric Hoffer
#86. We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate.
Eric Hoffer
#87. The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
Eric Hoffer
#88. Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
Eric Hoffer
#89. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.
Eric Hoffer
#90. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
Eric Hoffer
#91. Action can give us the feeling of being useful, but only words can give us a sense of weight and purpose.
Eric Hoffer
#92. We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
Eric Hoffer
#93. The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
Eric Hoffer
#94. There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.
Eric Hoffer
#95. Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
Eric Hoffer
#96. Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
Eric Hoffer
#97. It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.
Eric Hoffer
#98. A nation's preoccupation with history is not infrequently an effort to obtain a passport for the future. Often it is a forged passport.
Eric Hoffer
#99. However much we guard against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us.
Eric Hoffer
#100. One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
Eric Hoffer
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