Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.”

— Eric Hoffer

302. “Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.”

— Eric Hoffer

303. “It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.”

— Eric Hoffer

304. “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

305. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

308. “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

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

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

— Eric Hoffer

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

322. “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

323. “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

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. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

328. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

331. “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

332. “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

333. “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

334. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

338. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

341. “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

342. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

347. “It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

349. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer