Eric Hoffer

Man was nature’s mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
Eric Hoffer

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
Eric Hoffer

One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action – the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
Eric Hoffer

The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
Eric Hoffer

Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
Eric Hoffer

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
Eric Hoffer

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.
Eric Hoffer

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
Eric Hoffer

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer

Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
Eric Hoffer

Children are the keys of paradise.
Eric Hoffer

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy – the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Eric Hoffer

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
Eric Hoffer

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
Eric Hoffer

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
Eric Hoffer

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
Eric Hoffer

Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
Eric Hoffer

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
Eric Hoffer

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
Eric Hoffer

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
Eric Hoffer

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
Eric Hoffer

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
Eric Hoffer

You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
Eric Hoffer

It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
Eric Hoffer

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Eric Hoffer

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.
Eric Hoffer

I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
Eric Hoffer

We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
Eric Hoffer

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
Eric Hoffer

Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
Eric Hoffer

Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
Eric Hoffer

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Eric Hoffer