Eric Hoffer

There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

— Eric Hoffer

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

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

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it.

— Eric Hoffer

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

— Eric Hoffer

Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

— Eric Hoffer

We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.

— 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

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

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.

— Eric Hoffer

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

Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.

— Eric Hoffer

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

— Eric Hoffer

No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

A man by himself is in bad company.

— Eric Hoffer

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

Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story -- a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

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.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

— Eric Hoffer

It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.

— Eric Hoffer

The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us.

— Eric Hoffer

Youth itself is a talent -- a perishable talent.

— Eric Hoffer

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.

— Eric Hoffer

We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.

— Eric Hoffer

There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

— Eric Hoffer

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.

— Eric Hoffer

It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.

— Eric Hoffer

Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.

— Eric Hoffer

How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!

— Eric Hoffer

The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.

— Eric Hoffer

It is cheering to see that the rats are still aroundthe ship is not sinking.

— Eric Hoffer

The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flowby the tilt of the social landscape.

— Eric Hoffer

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem. Hoffer, Eric

— Eric Hoffer

The control of our being is not unlike the combination of a safe. One turn of the knob rarely unlocks the safe. Each advance and retreat is a step toward one’s goal.

— Eric Hoffer