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 Quote
A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Children are the keys of paradise.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Facts are counterrevolutionary.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
To the old, the new is usually bad news.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
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 Quote
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.
- Eric Hoffer Quote
