Eric Hoffer - The Ordeal of Change (1963)

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It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.

Eric Hoffer
It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.

Eric Hoffer
The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.

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 aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.

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

Eric Hoffer
It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression. St. Vincent De Paul cautioned his disciples to deport themselves so that the poor "will forgive them the bread you give them."

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

Eric Hoffer
There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

Eric Hoffer
We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the remarkable fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.

Eric Hoffer