Eric Hoffer Quotes

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.

The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.

We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.

Creativity is discontent translated into arts.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

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

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.

Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.

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

Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.

Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.

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.

Good writing , like gold , combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.

We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.

The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility

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

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

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.

A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.

How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.

There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

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.

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

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

The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.

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

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.

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.

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

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.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.

In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.

We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves.