Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest. A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness.”

— Eric Hoffer

152. “Those who feel guilty are afraid; and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.”

— Eric Hoffer

153. “The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.”

— Eric Hoffer

154. “The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.”

— Eric Hoffer

155. “Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

157. “Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.”

— Eric Hoffer

158. “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.”

— Eric Hoffer

159. “Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story – a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”

— Eric Hoffer

160. “When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed.”

— Eric Hoffer

161. “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.”

— Eric Hoffer

162. “Spiritual stagnation ensues when man’s environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.”

— Eric Hoffer

163. “A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.”

— Eric Hoffer

Featured in: Strong Quotes

164. “I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.”

— Eric Hoffer

165. “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.”

— Eric Hoffer

166. “There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother’s keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.”

— Eric Hoffer

167. “It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.”

— Eric Hoffer

168. “To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.”

— Eric Hoffer

169. “The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.”

— Eric Hoffer

170. “The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. According to Renan, “The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men.””

— Eric Hoffer

171. “There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

173. “The superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out; it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility.”

— Eric Hoffer

174. “It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.”

— Eric Hoffer

175. “The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.”

— Eric Hoffer

176. “When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.”

— Eric Hoffer

177. “Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.”

— Eric Hoffer

178. “We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.”

— Eric Hoffer

179. “Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man’s spirit than when we win his heart.”

— Eric Hoffer

180. “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.”

— Eric Hoffer

181. “Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.”

— Eric Hoffer

182. “There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement.”

— Eric Hoffer

183. “The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.”

— Eric Hoffer

184. “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.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

186. “It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.”

— Eric Hoffer

187. “A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.”

— Eric Hoffer

188. “Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.”

— Eric Hoffer

189. “No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments.”

— Eric Hoffer

190. “Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.”

— Eric Hoffer

191. “Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.”

— Eric Hoffer

192. “A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.”

— Eric Hoffer

193. “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.”

— Eric Hoffer

194. “Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person’s nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.”

— Eric Hoffer

195. “In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat.”

— Eric Hoffer

196. “What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?”

— Eric Hoffer

197. “Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .”

— Eric Hoffer

198. “The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.”

— Eric Hoffer

199. “A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.”

— Eric Hoffer

200. “To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.”

— Eric Hoffer