Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

153. “Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

155. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

157. “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

158. “Unity and self-sacrifice, of themselves, even when fostered by the most noble means, produce a facility for hating. Even when men league themselves mightily together to promote tolerance and peace on earth, they are likely to be violently intolerant toward those not of a like mind.”

— Eric Hoffer

159. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

161. “We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

164. “Children are the keys of paradise.”

— Eric Hoffer

165. “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

166. “That which is unique and worthwhile in us makes itself felt only in flashes. If we do not know how to catch and savor the flashes we are without growth and exhilaration.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

168. “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

169. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

175. “Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

177. “Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.”

— Eric Hoffer

178. “Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.”

— Eric Hoffer

179. “The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flowby the tilt of the social landscape.”

— Eric Hoffer

180. “All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium.”

— Eric Hoffer

181. “Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.”

— Eric Hoffer

182. “Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.”

— Eric Hoffer

183. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

185. “Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.”

— Eric Hoffer

186. “The conservatism of a religion – it’s orthodoxy – is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.”

— Eric Hoffer

187. “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

188. “It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.”

— Eric Hoffer

189. “True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.”

— Eric Hoffer

190. “Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

192. “The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

— Eric Hoffer

193. “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

194. “An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity – the endless flow of life and death – than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.”

— Eric Hoffer

195. “All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.”

— Eric Hoffer

196. “Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.”

— Eric Hoffer

197. “With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.”

— Eric Hoffer

198. “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

199. “People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.”

— Eric Hoffer

200. “Modern man is weighed down more by the burden of responsibility than by the burden of sin. We think him more a savior who shoulders our responsibilities than him who shoulders our sins. If instead of making decisions we have but to obey and do our duty, we feel it as a sort of salvation.”

— Eric Hoffer