Skip to content

Inspirational Quotes by Eric Hoffer

44 Inspirational quotes by Eric Hoffer

All Inspirational quotes Eric Hoffer’s page

Eric Hoffer talks about how we can be original by using ideas from others and by turning enemies into friends. He says fear makes power strong, that true courage often follows anger, and that humility means swapping one pride for another. The quotes stress that the effort we put into a goal matters more than the goal itself.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.

Image

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

Image

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.

Image

We cannot hate those who we despise.

Image

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Image

Creativity is discontent translated into arts.

Image

Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.

Image

There is no alienation that a little power will not cure.

Image

Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.

Image

Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.

Image

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.

Image

What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.

Image

We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.

Image

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.

Image

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

Image

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

Image

When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are…

Image

Learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Image

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange…

Image

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow…

Image

Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and…

Image

We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove…

Image

Those of little faith are of little hatred.

Image

It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.

Image

We see through others only when we see through ourselves.

Image

We can never have enough of that which we do not want.

Image

The well-adjusted make poor prophets.

Image

Anger is a prelude to courage.

Image

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

Image

There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

Image

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

Image

The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.

Image

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding,

Image

In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.

Image

Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.

Image

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.

Image

Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.

Image

A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.

Image

The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

Image

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

Image

Other authors on Inspirational

More by Eric Hoffer

The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new;…

When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.

“We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.”

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.

It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice - that is to say with a…

The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.

“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…

The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others. The impression somehow prevails that the…

A nation without dregs and malcontents, is orderly, decent, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still…

A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.

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

This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter