Eric Hoffer Quotes

396 Sourced Quotes

The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.

Eric Hoffer
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.

Eric Hoffer
When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.

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

Eric Hoffer
Discontent is at the root of the creative process: 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.

Eric Hoffer
The most important point is — and remains — not to take oneself seriously. There is no past, and, certainly, no future. There are but a few years — ten at the most. You pass your days as best you can, doing as little harm as possible. Let the desires be few and treat expectations as weeds. You read, scribble as the spirit moves you, hear some new music, see every week the few people you are attached to. Again: guard yourself, above all, against self-dramatization, a feeling of importance, and the sprouting of expectations.

Eric Hoffer
All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium.

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

Eric Hoffer
We can never have enough of that which we really do not want, and... we run fastest and farthest from ourselves.

Eric Hoffer
I am more and more convinced that taking life over-seriously is a frivolous thing. There is an affected self-dramatizing in the brooding over one's prospects and destiny. The trifling attitude of an Ecclesiastes is essentially sober and serious. It is in closer touch with the so-called eternal truths than are the most penetrating metaphysical probing and the most sensitive poetic insights.

Eric Hoffer
Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.

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

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

Eric Hoffer
There is nothing more explosive than a skilled population condemned to inaction. Such a population is likely to become a hotbed of extremism and intolerance, and be receptive to any proselytizing ideology, however absurd and vicious, which promises vast action.

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

Eric Hoffer
In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

Eric Hoffer
J. B. S. Haldane counts fanaticism among the only four really important inventions made between 3000 B. C and 1400 A. D. It was a Judaic-Christian invention. And it is strange to think that in receiving this malady of the soul the world also received a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead—an instrument of resurrection.

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
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.

Eric Hoffer
Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.

Eric Hoffer
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

Eric Hoffer