Eric Hoffer Quotes & Sayings

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

That the deprecating attitude of a mass movement toward the present seconds the inclinations of the frustrated is obvious. What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as they decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come from the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more -- and there is. By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation. It is as if they said: 'Not only our blemished selves, but the lives of all our contemporaries, even the most happy and successful, are worthless and wasted.' Thus by deprecating the present they acquire a vague sense of equality. — Eric Hoffer

An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity
the endless flow of life and death
than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous. — Eric Hoffer

A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend. — Eric Hoffer

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

To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much. — Eric Hoffer

Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented. — Eric Hoffer

In modern times, nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated. — Eric Hoffer

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

There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper. — Eric Hoffer

A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaningless of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring upon them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole. — Eric Hoffer

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

The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant. In an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self. — Eric Hoffer

The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. — Eric Hoffer

To the old, the new is usually bad news. — Eric Hoffer

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

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

I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac. — Eric Hoffer

In the countryside where the communal pattern was least disturbed, the new religion found the ground less favorable. The villagers (pagani) and the heath-dwellers (heathen) clung longest to the ancient cults. — Eric Hoffer

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

There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion." The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led. — Eric Hoffer

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

All prayers and hopes are a reaching-out for coincidences. — Eric Hoffer

The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers. — Eric Hoffer

To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes
we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world. — Eric Hoffer

Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have. — Eric Hoffer

Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency. — Eric Hoffer

I could never figure out or probably did not take the trouble to figure out what the great philosophical problems are about. The momentous statements I come across are at best a storm in a teacup. There are quite a number of people who have a vested interest in the stuff, make a noble living out of it, and they conspire with one another to keep it alive. — Eric Hoffer

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. — Eric Hoffer

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. — Eric Hoffer

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

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. — Eric Hoffer

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. — Eric Hoffer

Children are the keys of paradise. — Eric Hoffer

The readiness to praise others indicates a desire for excellence and perhaps an ability to realize it. — Eric Hoffer

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

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. — Eric Hoffer

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives. — Eric Hoffer

The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement. — Eric Hoffer

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

Seen as a process of imitation, it becomes understandable why the Westernization of a backward country so often breeds a violent antagonism toward the West. People who become like us do not necessarily love us. The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate - to surpass it, leave it behind, or, better still, eliminate it completely. Now and then in history the last was done first: the imitators began by destroying the model and then proceeded to imitate it. We are apparently most at ease when we imitate a defeated or dead model. — Eric Hoffer

The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable. — Eric Hoffer

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. — Eric Hoffer

Modern man is weighed down more by the burden of responsibility than by the burden of sin . We think him more a savior who shoulders our responsibilities than him who shoulders our sins. If instead of making decisions we have but to obey and do our duty, we feel it as a sort of salvation. — Eric Hoffer

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

A peculiar side of credulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. They inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism. — Eric Hoffer

There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness. — Eric Hoffer

The purpose of philosophers is to show people what is right under their noses. — Eric Hoffer

A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness. — Eric Hoffer

In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn. — Eric Hoffer

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist. — Eric Hoffer

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

It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be. — Eric Hoffer

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil. — Eric Hoffer

Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success — Eric Hoffer

What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored. — Eric Hoffer

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. — Eric Hoffer

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice. — Eric Hoffer

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

The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. — Eric Hoffer

Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy. — Eric Hoffer

Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet. — Eric Hoffer

Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk. — Eric Hoffer

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

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. 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. — Eric Hoffer

It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority. 41 — Eric Hoffer

The original insight is most likely to come when elements stored in different compartments of the mind drift into the open, jostle one another, and now and then form new combinations. — Eric Hoffer

One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perservereingly during fifty-five years; that word is failure — Eric Hoffer

In man's life, the absence of an essential component usually leads to the adoption of a substitute. The substitute is usually embraced with vehemence and extremism, for we have to convince ourselves that what we took as second choice is the best there ever was. Thus blind faith is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves; insatiable desire a substitute for hope; accumulation a substitute for growth; fervent hustling a substitute for purposeful action; and pride a substitute for an unattainable self-respect. — Eric Hoffer

The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person. — Eric Hoffer

The differences between the conservative and the radical seem to
spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the
future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith
in the future renders us receptive to change. — Eric Hoffer

A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. — Eric Hoffer

Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing. — Eric Hoffer

If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences. — Eric Hoffer

They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually their innermost desire is for an end to the "free for all." They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society. 29 — Eric Hoffer

Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future ... We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken. — Eric Hoffer

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition. — Eric Hoffer

Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words. — Eric Hoffer

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

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

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. — Eric Hoffer

There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgment. — Eric Hoffer

Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat. — Eric Hoffer

The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power. — Eric Hoffer

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world. — Eric Hoffer

Whenever we proclaim the uniqueness of a religion , a truth , a leader, a nation, a race, a part or a holy cause, we are also proclaiming our own uniqueness. — Eric Hoffer

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

The well-adjusted make poor prophets. — Eric Hoffer

You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness. — Eric Hoffer

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

The contribution of the Western democracies to the awakening of the East has been indirect and certainly unintended. They have kindled an enthusiasm of resentment against the West; and it is this anti-Western fervor which is at present rousing the Orient from its stagnation of centuries.2 — Eric Hoffer

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

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. — Eric Hoffer

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

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

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

To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews , and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance. — Eric Hoffer

A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is. — Eric Hoffer

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

The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements. — Eric Hoffer