Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 7 of 10

301. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

303. “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

304. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

306. “A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.”

— Eric Hoffer

307. “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

308. “Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.”

— Eric Hoffer

309. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

312. “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

313. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

316. “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

317. “Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.”

— Eric Hoffer

318. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

320. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

322. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

324. “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

325. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

329. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

331. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

333. “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

334. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

339. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

341. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

346. “Facts are counterrevolutionary.”

— 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. “The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer