Top 500 Eric Hoffer Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact.”

— Eric Hoffer

352. “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

353. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

355. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

359. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

361. “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

362. “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

363. “Successful action tends to become an end in itself.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

366. “Language was invented to ask questions.”

— Eric Hoffer

367. “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

368. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

371. “It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have “something worth fighting for,” they do not feel like fighting. People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause.9 Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.”

— Eric Hoffer

372. “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

373. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

375. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

378. “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

379. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

381. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

383. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

386. “Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people’s assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

388. “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

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

391. “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

392. “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

393. “It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.”

— Eric Hoffer

394. “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

395. “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

396. “The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.”

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

400. “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