Quotes from Eric Hoffer

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

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

To learn you need a certain degree of confidence, not too much and not too little. If you have too little confidence, you will think you can't learn. If you have too much, you will think you don't have to learn.

Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.

Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.

There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.

To change everything, simply change your attitude.

Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.

There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

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

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!

The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

We can be satisfied with moderate confidence in ourselves and with a moderately good opinion of ourselves, but the faith we have in a holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising.

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.

A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.

Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.