People Quotes by Eric Hoffer

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

— Eric Hoffer

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

— Eric Hoffer

It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.

— Eric Hoffer

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

— Eric Hoffer

The purpose of philosophers is to show people what is right under their noses.

— Eric Hoffer

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

— Eric Hoffer

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole,…

— Eric Hoffer

Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and…

— Eric Hoffer

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind…

— Eric Hoffer

The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when…

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by…

— Eric Hoffer

It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only…

— Eric Hoffer

For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove…

— Eric Hoffer

The well adjusted make poor prophets. A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic change. We cling to what we…

— Eric Hoffer

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire…

— Eric Hoffer

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still…

— Eric Hoffer

Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and…

— Eric Hoffer

I could never figure out or probably did not take the trouble to figure out what the great philosophical problems are about.…

— Eric Hoffer

People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident.…

— Eric Hoffer

Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we…

— Eric Hoffer

People haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy…

— Eric Hoffer

Give people pride and they'll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction…

— Eric Hoffer

However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.

— Eric Hoffer

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.

— Eric Hoffer

The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.

— Eric Hoffer

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

— Eric Hoffer

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

— Eric Hoffer

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America,

— Eric Hoffer

In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.

— Eric Hoffer

...the majority of people cannot endure the bareness and futility of their lives unless they have some ardent dedication, or some passionate…

— Eric Hoffer

A compilation of what outstanding people said or wrote at the age of 20 would make a collection of asinine pronouncements.

— Eric Hoffer

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

— Eric Hoffer

There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for…

— Eric Hoffer

People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.

— Eric Hoffer

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only…

— Eric Hoffer

people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while…

— Eric Hoffer

If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir…

— Eric Hoffer