Eric Hoffer Quotes - Page 2

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. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.
Eric Hoffer
If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
Eric Hoffer
When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
Eric Hoffer
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
Eric Hoffer
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Eric Hoffer
The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
Eric Hoffer
They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor. (Eric Hoffer 1902-1983)
Eric Hoffer
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket.
Eric Hoffer
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
Eric Hoffer
It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.
Eric Hoffer
In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer
If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident.
Eric Hoffer
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
Eric Hoffer
We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes--courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc.--can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.Nature has no compassion. It is, in the words of William Blake, "a creation that groans, living on the death; where fish and bird and beast and tree and metal and stone live by devouring." Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
Eric Hoffer
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
Eric Hoffer
Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
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
The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.
Eric Hoffer
In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer
Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
Eric Hoffer
Anger is the prelude to courage.
Eric Hoffer
No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.
Eric Hoffer
The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
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
Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Eric Hoffer
If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.
Eric Hoffer
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.
Eric Hoffer
We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
Eric Hoffer
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
Eric Hoffer
We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer
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
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
Eric Hoffer
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
Eric Hoffer
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
Eric Hoffer