Eric Hoffer Quotes

Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity.

They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.

That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.

The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.

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

The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.

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

Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.

One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.

The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.

I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.

Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.

Communists are frustrated capitalists.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.

To change everything, simply change your attitude.

Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.

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

Somewhere between the Angels and the French lies the rest of humanity.

Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.

It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.

It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.

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.

Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out.

There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the passionate state of mind.

This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter

When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.

If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.

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.

No one has a right to happiness.

Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.

He who has nothing and wants something is less frustrated than he who has something and wants more.

...the majority of people cannot endure the bareness and futility of their lives unless they have some ardent dedication, or some passionate pursuit in which they can lose themselves.

The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.

Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.

A good sentence is a key . It unlocks the mind of the reader.

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

God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: "I am what I am." Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: "I am what I am not.

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

There is no reason to believe that the nature of the violent minorities is now greatly different from what it was in the past. What has changed is the will and ability of the majority to react.

What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be "contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.

A man by himself is in bad company.

Those of little faith are of little hatred.

Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.