Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

155. “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

156. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

160. “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

161. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

163. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

170. “Children are the keys of paradise.”

— Eric Hoffer

171. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

174. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

176. “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

177. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

180. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

183. “Lack of self-awareness renders us transparent. A soul that knows itself is opaque; like Adam after he ate from the tree of knowledge it uses words as fig leaves to cover its nakedness and shame.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

188. “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

189. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

191. “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

192. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

194. “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

195. “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

196. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

198. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

200. “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