Famous Eric Hoffer Quotations

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"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves."
by Eric Hoffer
"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
by Eric Hoffer
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them."
by Eric Hoffer
"A man by himself is in bad company."
by Eric Hoffer
"A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor."
by Eric Hoffer
"A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything."
by Eric Hoffer
"The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself."
by Eric Hoffer
"The greatest weariness comes from work not done."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person."
by Eric Hoffer
"The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop."
by Eric Hoffer
"There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his."
by Eric Hoffer
"There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other."
by Eric Hoffer
"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are."
by Eric Hoffer
"Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true."
by Eric Hoffer
"To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance."
by Eric Hoffer
"To the old, the new is usually bad news."
by Eric Hoffer
"We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious."
by Eric Hoffer
"We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails."
by Eric Hoffer
"We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams."
by Eric Hoffer
"We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white."
by Eric Hoffer
"We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves."
by Eric Hoffer
"When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths."
by Eric Hoffer
"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."
by Eric Hoffer
"Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains."
by Eric Hoffer
"Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"Animals often strike us as passionate machines."
by Eric Hoffer
"Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless."
by Eric Hoffer
"Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak."
by Eric Hoffer
"It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities."
by Eric Hoffer
"It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents."
by Eric Hoffer
"Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind."
by Eric Hoffer
"Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible."
by Eric Hoffer
"Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny."
by Eric Hoffer
"Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled."
by Eric Hoffer
"Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives."
by Eric Hoffer
"It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it."
by Eric Hoffer
"Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"Facts are counterrevolutionary."
by Eric Hoffer
"Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."
by Eric Hoffer
"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."
by Eric Hoffer
"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail."
by Eric Hoffer
"Children are the keys of paradise."
by Eric Hoffer
"A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time."
by Eric Hoffer
"A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come."
by Eric Hoffer
"A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past."
by Eric Hoffer
"Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat."
by Eric Hoffer
"All leaders strive to turn their followers into children."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love."
by Eric Hoffer
"Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership."
by Eric Hoffer
"Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us."
by Eric Hoffer
"Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature."
by Eric Hoffer
"Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself."
by Eric Hoffer
"Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation."
by Eric Hoffer
"Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are."
by Eric Hoffer
"Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem."
by Eric Hoffer
"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."
by Eric Hoffer
"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves."
by Eric Hoffer
"He who has nothing and wants something is less frustrated than he who has something and wants more."
by Eric Hoffer
"However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable."
by Eric Hoffer
"I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world which no longer exists."
by Eric Hoffer
"In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable."
by Eric Hoffer
"It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn."
by Eric Hoffer
"It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence."
by Eric Hoffer
"Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake."
by Eric Hoffer
"Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners."
by Eric Hoffer
"Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do."
by Eric Hoffer
"No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart."
by Eric Hoffer
"Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity"
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard."
by Eric Hoffer
"Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay."
by Eric Hoffer
"Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing."
by Eric Hoffer
"Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart."
by Eric Hoffer
"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."
by Eric Hoffer
"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both."
by Eric Hoffer
"People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a 'have' type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a 'have not' type of self."
by Eric Hoffer
"Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunites for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults."
by Eric Hoffer
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."
by Eric Hoffer


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