Eric Hoffer Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Eric Hoffer:
Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
~Eric Hoffer
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A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
~Eric Hoffer
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
~Eric Hoffer
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We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
~Eric Hoffer
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Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
~Eric Hoffer
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Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.
~Eric Hoffer
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Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
~Eric Hoffer
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To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
~Eric Hoffer
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When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
~Eric Hoffer
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Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
~Eric Hoffer
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Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
~Eric Hoffer
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Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.
~Eric Hoffer
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The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
~Eric Hoffer
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Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
~Eric Hoffer
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Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
~Eric Hoffer
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Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.
~Eric Hoffer
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When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.
~Eric Hoffer
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In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
~Eric Hoffer
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We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
~Eric Hoffer
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Children are the keys of paradise.
~Eric Hoffer
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
~Eric Hoffer
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Facts are counterrevolutionary.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
~Eric Hoffer
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Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
~Eric Hoffer
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The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.
~Eric Hoffer
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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
~Eric Hoffer
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A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
~Eric Hoffer
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There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.
~Eric Hoffer
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There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
~Eric Hoffer
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
~Eric Hoffer
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The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
~Eric Hoffer
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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
~Eric Hoffer
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
~Eric Hoffer
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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
~Eric Hoffer
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We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
~Eric Hoffer
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There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
~Eric Hoffer
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Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
~Eric Hoffer
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We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.
~Eric Hoffer
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A man by himself is in bad company.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
~Eric Hoffer
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
~Eric Hoffer
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Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.
~Eric Hoffer
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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
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You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.
~Eric Hoffer
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The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
~Eric Hoffer
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
~Eric Hoffer
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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
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
~Eric Hoffer
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The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
~Eric Hoffer
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It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
~Eric Hoffer
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A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
~Eric Hoffer
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To the old, the new is usually bad news.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
~Eric Hoffer
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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.
~Eric Hoffer
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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
~Eric Hoffer
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With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
~Eric Hoffer
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The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
~Eric Hoffer
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
~Eric Hoffer
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Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
~Eric Hoffer
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
~Eric Hoffer
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We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
~Eric Hoffer
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I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
~Eric Hoffer
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Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
~Eric Hoffer
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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
~Eric Hoffer
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We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
~Eric Hoffer
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
~Eric Hoffer
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The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
~Eric Hoffer
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We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.
~Eric Hoffer
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We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
~Eric Hoffer
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The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
~Eric Hoffer
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Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
~Eric Hoffer
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
~Eric Hoffer
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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
~Eric Hoffer
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Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
~Eric Hoffer
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A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
~Eric Hoffer
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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
~Eric Hoffer
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To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
~Eric Hoffer
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There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
~Eric Hoffer
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An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
~Eric Hoffer
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There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
~Eric Hoffer
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Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.
~Eric Hoffer
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One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
~Eric Hoffer
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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
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It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.
~Eric Hoffer
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It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
~Eric Hoffer
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
~Eric Hoffer
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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
~Eric Hoffer
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People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
~Eric Hoffer
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Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
~Eric Hoffer
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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
~Eric Hoffer
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The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.
~Eric Hoffer
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Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
~Eric Hoffer
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Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
~Eric Hoffer
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Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
~Eric Hoffer
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It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
~Eric Hoffer
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Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
~Eric Hoffer
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
~Eric Hoffer
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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
~Eric Hoffer
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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
~Eric Hoffer
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What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
~Eric Hoffer
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Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
~Eric Hoffer
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You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
~Eric Hoffer
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We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
~Eric Hoffer
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There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
~Eric Hoffer
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Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
~Eric Hoffer
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It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
~Eric Hoffer
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It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.
~Eric Hoffer
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Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
~Eric Hoffer
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