Eric Hoffer Quotes

396 Sourced Quotes

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
There is a time when the word "eventually" has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.

Eric Hoffer
Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.

Eric Hoffer
There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation, or a distinct group by its least qualified members.

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
The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.

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

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

Eric Hoffer
Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.

Eric Hoffer
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

Eric Hoffer
There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing — as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.

Eric Hoffer
To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.

Eric Hoffer
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
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
Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.

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

Eric Hoffer
Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.

Eric Hoffer
I have never felt that I had a thought too profound for others to understand. On the contrary, it always seemed to me axiomatic that what was clear to me should be clear and easy to everyone else. This despite the fact that it often took me years to grope my way to an idea.... I can spend days and even months on a single sentence. I do not know how to skip. To think and write with me is like putting brick on brick.

Eric Hoffer
The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion — it is an evil government.

Eric Hoffer
In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo's definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern

Eric Hoffer
It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves — not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.

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

Eric Hoffer
The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.

Eric Hoffer
Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.

Eric Hoffer
The sense of worth derived from creative work depends upon "recognition" by others, which is never automatic. As a result, the path of self-realization, even when it is the only open one, is taken with reluctance. Men of talent have to be goaded to engage in creative work. The groans and laments of even the most gifted and prolific echo through the ages.

Eric Hoffer
There is no alienation that a little power will not cure.

Eric Hoffer
The attitude of the intellectual community toward America is shaped not by the creative few but by the many who for one reason or another cannot transmute their dissatisfaction into a creative impulse, and cannot acquire a sense of uniqueness and of growth by developing and expressing their capacities and talents. There is nothing in contemporary America that can cure or alleviate their chronic frustration. They want power, lordship, and opportunities for imposing action. Even if we should banish poverty from the land, lift up the Negro to true equality, withdraw from Vietnam, and give half of the national income as foreign aid, they will still see America as an air-conditioned nightmare unfit for them to live in.

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

Eric Hoffer
The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

Eric Hoffer