Quotes from 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. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunies for battle.

Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.

The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.

We feel free when we escape — even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire.

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom — freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.

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.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

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

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.

It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.

We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true they ruin our dreams.

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.