Eric Hoffer Quotes

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

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

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

The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

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.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

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.

To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

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

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

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

The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

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

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.

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

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

No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.

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

Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.

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

To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.

The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.

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

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

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

Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.

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

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.

It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.

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

...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.

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

When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable animated instrument which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.

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

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause

Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.

Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

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

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty towards others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like a giving hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

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

The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.

We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.

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

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 opportunities 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.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

Creativity is discontent translated into arts.

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.

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

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 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

Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.

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.

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

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

No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.

To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.

It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for,they do not feel like fighting.

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 uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter unworthiness can be a source of courage.

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

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

We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us.

All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.

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.

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

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

Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

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.