Quotes from Eric Hoffer

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day; we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.

The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.

Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.

There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

You can never get enough of what you don't really need.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

Things which are not are indeed mightier than things that are. In all ages men have fought most desperately for beautiful cities yet to be built and gardens yet to be planted.

The enemy—the indispensible devil of every mass movement—is omnipresent. He plots both outside and inside the ranks of the faithful. It is his voice that speaks through the mouth of the dissenter, and the deviationists are his stooges. If anything goes wrong within the movement, it is his doing. It is the sacred duty of the true believer to be suspicious. He must be constantly on the lookout for saboteurs, spies and traitors.

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

There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.

To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.