Eric Hoffer > Quotes

“Rudeness is the weak mans imitation of strength.”
― Eric Hoffer

“We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.”
― Eric Hoffer

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

“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

“The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”
― Eric Hoffer

“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.”
― Eric Hoffer

“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”
― Eric Hoffer

“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.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Anger is the prelude to courage.”
― Eric Hoffer

“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

“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.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it.Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
― Eric Hoffer

“When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.”
― 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

“Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.”
― Eric Hoffer

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

“To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.”
― Eric Hoffer

“You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.”
― Eric Hoffer

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.”
― Eric Hoffer

“What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.”
― Eric Hoffer

“You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.”
― Eric Hoffer

“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.”
― Eric Hoffer

“It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
”
― Eric Hoffer

“The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
”
― Eric Hoffer

“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

“In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.”
― Eric Hoffer

“It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay. ”
― Eric Hoffer

“people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.”
― Eric Hoffer

“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“Our passionate preoccupation with the sun, the stars and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from. ”
― Eric Hoffer

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
― Eric Hoffer

“We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.”
― Eric Hoffer

“There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion." The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.”
― Eric Hoffer

“...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Sering dikatakan orang bahwa bakat memberi banyak kesempatan untuk maju.
Namun semangat besarlah yang kerap memberi kesempatan, dan bahkan memberi banyak bakat.”
― Eric Hoffer

“How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.”
― Eric Hoffer

“There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.”
― Eric Hoffer

“It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
”
― Eric Hoffer

“Passionate hatreds can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. These people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.”
― Eric Hoffer

“To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.”
― 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 their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.”
― Eric Hoffer