Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause. God wishes, said Calvin, that one should put aside all humanity when it is a question of striving for His glory...”

— Eric Hoffer

302. “The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

304. “In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe’s craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe’s wrath and scorn.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

306. “Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.”

— Eric Hoffer

307. “The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.”

— Eric Hoffer

308. “The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.”

— Eric Hoffer

309. “It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

311. “Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.”

— Eric Hoffer

312. “All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.”

— Eric Hoffer

313. “There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.”

— Eric Hoffer

314. “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

315. “You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him; you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

317. “Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.”

— Eric Hoffer

318. “Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

320. “There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgment.”

— Eric Hoffer

321. “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

322. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

326. “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a G-d, but never without belief in a devil. Usually, the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

328. “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

329. “Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.”

— Eric Hoffer

330. “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

331. “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

332. “The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

335. “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

336. “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

337. “A man’s worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.”

— Eric Hoffer

338. “I can do no better than quote Montaigne: “All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.”

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

— Eric Hoffer

341. “Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

343. “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

344. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

346. “Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”

— Eric Hoffer

347. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

349. “There is nothing more explosive than a skilled population condemned to inaction. Such a population is likely to become a hotbed of extremism and intolerance, and be receptive to any proselytizing ideology, however absurd and vicious, which promises vast action.”

— Eric Hoffer

350. “To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.”

— Eric Hoffer