Quotes from Eric Hoffer

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

It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.

Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity.

Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.

Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.

The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.

Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.

However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.

Friendship Never explain -- your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe it anyway. A real friend never gets in your way, unless you happen to be on the way down. A friend is someone you can do nothing with and enjoy it. However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.