Eric Hoffer Quotes
It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
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.
We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.
Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
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.
The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.
There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.
Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.
Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth
When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world.
Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts.
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
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 less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.
