It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
Eric Hoffer quote on Death
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.
Eric Hoffer quote on Credulity
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Eric Hoffer quote on People
Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be free from freedom.”
Eric Hoffer quote on Talent, Freedom
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.
Eric Hoffer quote on Power
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 quote on Modernity
There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
Eric Hoffer quote on Loneliness
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
Eric Hoffer quote on Life
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
Eric Hoffer quote on History
One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world’s problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive – it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.
Eric Hoffer quote on Satisfaction, Society
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.
Eric Hoffer quote on Fear
Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.
Eric Hoffer quote on Man
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
Eric Hoffer quote on Happiness
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
Eric Hoffer quote on Compassion
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
Eric Hoffer quote on Soul, Humanity
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.
Eric Hoffer quote on Nonconformity
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer quote on Kindness
“A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.
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Eric Hoffer quote on Society
The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.
Eric Hoffer quote on Life
It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
Eric Hoffer quote on Youth
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.
Eric Hoffer quote on Dissatisfaction
There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.
Eric Hoffer quote on Giving
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.
Eric Hoffer quote on Truth
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story – a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
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Eric Hoffer quote on Storyteller, Life
“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.
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Eric Hoffer quote on Home, Roots
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
Eric Hoffer quote on America, Immigration
