Quotes from Eric Hoffer

The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us.

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

There is a radicalism in all getting and a conservatism in all keeping. Lovemaking is radical while marriage is conservative.

Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.

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.

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

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.

The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.

Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.

To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.

Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.

Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

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

Man is the most alive of living things. In him the traits which distinguish the animate from the inanimate become most pronounced. This is particularly true of his creativeness, which is essentially life giving. It introduces order into the randomness of nature... and is actuated not only by the present environment but by memories and goals.

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.