Eric Hoffer Quotes

396 Sourced Quotes

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

Eric Hoffer
To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.

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
You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him; you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.

Eric Hoffer
The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.

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

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

Eric Hoffer
When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.

Eric Hoffer
There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.

Eric Hoffer
The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation.

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

Eric Hoffer
The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.

Eric Hoffer
The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate.

Eric Hoffer
In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them

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

Eric Hoffer
Intolerance is the ''Do Not Touch'' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness.

Eric Hoffer
Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.

Eric Hoffer
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.

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

Eric Hoffer
In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.

Eric Hoffer
Conservatism is sometimes a symptom of sterility. Those who have nothing in them that can grow and develop must cling to what they have in beliefs, ideas and possessions. The sterile radical, too, is basically conservative. He is afraid to let go of the ideas and beliefs he picked up in his youth lest his life be seen as empty and wasted.

Eric Hoffer
Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.

Eric Hoffer
Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.

Eric Hoffer
A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.

Eric Hoffer
It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

Eric Hoffer
Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

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