Quotes from Eric Hoffer

Children are the keys of paradise.

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

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

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.

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.

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.

This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter

God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: "I am what I am." Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: "I am what I am not.

A man by himself is in bad company.

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.

A low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men.

Nature attains perfection, but man never does.

All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.

Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.

When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.

Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.

A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.

To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.

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.

Vaguely at first, then more distinctly, I realized that man is an eternal stranger on this planet.

There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished...Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.

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

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.