Quotes from Eric Hoffer

Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.

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.

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

It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.

Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.

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

Whenever we proclaim the uniqueness of a religion , a truth , a leader, a nation, a race, a part or a holy cause, we are also proclaiming our own uniqueness.

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.

Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.

When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die; young and playful.

Far more critical than what we know or what we don't know is what we don't want to know.

It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

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.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

He who has nothing and wants something is less frustrated than he who has something and wants more.

Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.

We can never have enough of that which we really do not want.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power - power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

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.

Treasure the memories of past misfortunes; they constitute our bank of fortitude.