Reflections on the Human Condition Quotes

“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

“In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes--courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc.--can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
Nature has no compassion. It is, in the words of William Blake, "a creation that groans, living on the death; where fish and bird and beast and tree and metal and stone live by devouring." Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.     44”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.     142”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.     104”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, 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.     41”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“Patience is a byproduct of growth - we can bide our time when it is the time of our growth. There is no patience in
acquisition or in the pursuit of power and fame. Nothing is so impatient as the pursuit of a substitute for growth.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“Man was nature’s mistake—she neglected to finish him—and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“A plant needs roots in order to grow. With man it is the other way around: only when he grows does he have roots and feels at home in the world.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.”
― eric hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“Belief passes, but to have believed never passes.     18”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“Mass movements use irrationality to shut out the intellect, to turn people into predictable, mindless machines. Both Stalin and Hitler used blind faith as a device for mechanizing souls. (11)”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition