Eric Hoffer Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Eric Hoffer on Wise Famous Quotes.
It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest.
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.
The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.
Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
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.
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Action can give us the feeling of being useful, but only words can give us a sense of weight and purpose.
A person's creative ability decreases in direct proportion to the degree to which he takes himself seriously.
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
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.
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him
Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.
If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.
There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse.
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.
The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole
the church, party, nation
and not to his fellow true believer.
the church, party, nation
and not to his fellow true believer.
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.
Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
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.
It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have something worth fighting for,they do not feel like fighting.
Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.
There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.
Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
America is still the best country for the common man
white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.
white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.
Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.
When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.
It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.