Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
Eric Hoffer
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
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Eric Hoffer
It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.
Eric Hoffer
The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
Eric Hoffer
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer
Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
Eric Hoffer
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Eric Hoffer
To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
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
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Eric Hoffer
The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
Eric Hoffer
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
Eric Hoffer
Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
Eric Hoffer
It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
Eric Hoffer
To the old, the new is usually bad news.
Eric Hoffer
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
Eric Hoffer
You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
Eric Hoffer
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
Eric Hoffer
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
Eric Hoffer
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy – the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Eric Hoffer
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
Eric Hoffer
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
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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
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
The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
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
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Eric Hoffer
Children are the keys of paradise.
Eric Hoffer
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
Eric Hoffer
The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
Eric Hoffer
The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
Eric Hoffer
A man by himself is in bad company.
Eric Hoffer
It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
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
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
Eric Hoffer
Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
Eric Hoffer
Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
Eric Hoffer
Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
Eric Hoffer
The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
Eric Hoffer
A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
Eric Hoffer
Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
Eric Hoffer
Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
Eric Hoffer
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one’s balance and keep afloat.
Eric Hoffer
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer
Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
Eric Hoffer
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
Eric Hoffer
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
Eric Hoffer
