Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending – for making a show – and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing mass spectacle. Deprecation.”

— Eric Hoffer

302. “It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.”

— Eric Hoffer

303. “The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.”

— Eric Hoffer

304. “Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.”

— Eric Hoffer

305. “The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.”

— Eric Hoffer

306. “Passionate intensity may serve as a substitute for confidence.”

— Eric Hoffer

307. “Man’s chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.”

— Eric Hoffer

308. “One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.”

— Eric Hoffer

309. “Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one’s balance and keep afloat.”

— Eric Hoffer

310. “No one has a right to happiness.”

— Eric Hoffer

311. “There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse.”

— Eric Hoffer

312. “There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.”

— Eric Hoffer

313. “Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.”

— Eric Hoffer

314. “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.”

— Eric Hoffer

315. “To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes – we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.”

— Eric Hoffer

316. “When we are conscious of our worthlessness, we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are. If then we discover any similarity between them and us, we see it as irrefutable evidence of their worthlessness and inferiority. It is thus that with some people familiarity breeds contempt.”

— Eric Hoffer

317. “We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.”

— Eric Hoffer

318. “The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.”

— Eric Hoffer

319. “There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.”

— Eric Hoffer

320. “It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.”

— Eric Hoffer

321. “Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.”

— Eric Hoffer

322. “It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.”

— Eric Hoffer

323. “It is a strange thing that both the injurer and the injured, the sinner and he who is sinned against, should find in the mass movement an escape from a blemished life.”

— Eric Hoffer

324. “Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.”

— Eric Hoffer

325. “We are made kind by being kind.”

— Eric Hoffer

326. “Take man’s most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.”

— Eric Hoffer

327. “The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”

— Eric Hoffer

328. “The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.”

— Eric Hoffer

329. “In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.”

— Eric Hoffer

330. “Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.”

— Eric Hoffer

331. “When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.”

— Eric Hoffer

332. “Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.”

— Eric Hoffer

333. “Somewhere between the Angels and the French lies the rest of humanity.”

— Eric Hoffer

334. “Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.”

— Eric Hoffer

335. “Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.”

— Eric Hoffer

336. “Language was invented to ask questions.”

— Eric Hoffer

337. “A person’s creative ability decreases in direct proportion to the degree to which he takes himself seriously.”

— Eric Hoffer

338. “Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.”

— Eric Hoffer

339. “Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.”

— Eric Hoffer

340. “The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.”

— Eric Hoffer

341. “Facts are counterrevolutionary.”

— Eric Hoffer

342. “Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.”

— Eric Hoffer

343. “We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact.”

— Eric Hoffer

344. “Those of little faith are of little hatred.”

— Eric Hoffer

345. “There is no reason to believe that the nature of the violent minorities is now greatly different from what it was in the past. What has changed is the will and ability of the majority to react.”

— Eric Hoffer

346. “In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.”

— Eric Hoffer

347. “It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice – that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt – are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.”

— Eric Hoffer

348. “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business. This minding of other people’s business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat. 11.”

— Eric Hoffer

349. “We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.”

— Eric Hoffer

350. “Action can give us the feeling of being useful, but only words can give us a sense of weight and purpose.”

— Eric Hoffer