Eric Hoffer quotes:

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

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.

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.

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.

We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.

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.

The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

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.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.

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.

The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

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

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

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.

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

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.

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.

A man by himself is in bad company.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

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.

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

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.

The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia."

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.

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant. In an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self.

A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.

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.

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

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.

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

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.

We are made kind by being kind.

We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.

America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.

Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.

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.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .

The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.

The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth

To change everything, simply change your attitude.

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.

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

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.

The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.

The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind -- the mind of a fighter -- in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man's first beginning.

We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.

It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.

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

The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.

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.

One is not quite certain that creativeness in the arts, literature, and science functions best in an environment of absolute freedom. Chances are that a relatively mild tyranny stimulates creativeness.

Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a lump. And it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes, it is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.

The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.

In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self.

The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.

Creativity is discontent translated into arts.

Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.

Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.

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.

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.

We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.

A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.

Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.

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.

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites-opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity-where energies flow smoothly in one direction-there will be much doing but no music.

Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.

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.

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.

Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?

...the differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change.

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.