Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Successful action tends to become an end in itself.”

— Eric Hoffer

352. “It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.”

— Eric Hoffer

353. “The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.”

— Eric Hoffer

354. “The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

356. “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

357. “A man by himself is in bad company.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

359. “Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance – a flailing of the arms to to regain one’s balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.”

— Eric Hoffer

360. “We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest.”

— Eric Hoffer

361. “We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

364. “The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.”

— Eric Hoffer

365. “There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.”

— Eric Hoffer

366. “There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses.”

— Eric Hoffer

367. “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

368. “The fear of becoming a ‘has-been’ keeps some people from becoming anything.”

— Eric Hoffer

369. “The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.”

— Eric Hoffer

370. “A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.”

— Eric Hoffer

371. “We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.”

— Eric Hoffer

372. “I always held my flower in a clenched fist.”

— Eric Hoffer

373. “In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.”

— Eric Hoffer

374. “The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

376. “There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.”

— Eric Hoffer

377. “The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.”

— Eric Hoffer

378. “It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.”

— Eric Hoffer

379. “The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.”

— Eric Hoffer

380. “We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.”

— Eric Hoffer

381. “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

382. “The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor’s shortcomings as he is of his own.”

— Eric Hoffer

383. “Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.”

— Eric Hoffer

384. “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

385. “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

386. “Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.”

— Eric Hoffer

387. “A man’s soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.”

— Eric Hoffer

388. “When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.”

— Eric Hoffer

389. “Words have ruined more souls than any devil’s agency.”

— Eric Hoffer

390. “A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.”

— Eric Hoffer

391. “Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.”

— Eric Hoffer

392. “Good writing, like gold, combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.”

— Eric Hoffer

393. “Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a lump. And it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes, it is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.”

— Eric Hoffer

394. “A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.”

— Eric Hoffer

395. “Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth.”

— Eric Hoffer

396. “Whenever we proclaim the uniqueness of a religion, a truth, a leader, a nation, a race, a part or a holy cause, we are also proclaiming our own uniqueness.”

— Eric Hoffer

397. “The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.”

— Eric Hoffer

398. “They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually their innermost desire is for an end to the “free for all.” They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society. 29.”

— Eric Hoffer

399. “To believe that if only we had this or that we would be happy, or to pursue any excessive desire, diverts us from seeing that happiness depends on an adequate self.”

— Eric Hoffer

400. “However much we guard against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us.”

— Eric Hoffer