Eric Hoffer Quotes

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

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

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

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.

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

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

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

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.

Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.

Children are the keys of paradise.

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

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

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.

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

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

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.

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.

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

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

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

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

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

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

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

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.

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

It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.

The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

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

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

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

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

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

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.

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.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

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

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.

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

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

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

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

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.

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

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

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.

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

A man by himself is in bad company.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

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

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

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

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

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

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

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.

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

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

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

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

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

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.

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

It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

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

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

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

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

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

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

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

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

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.

The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

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

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

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

Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.

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

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

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