Eric Hoffer's Quotes

We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.

The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.

Children are the keys of paradise.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

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.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

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.

A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?

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.

A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.

It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.

Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.

There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.

Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.

There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.

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.

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.

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.