Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites-opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
[The designated or chosen leader tries to] articulate and justify the resentment dammed up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes- courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on - can… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment damned… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new;… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice - that is to say with a… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
“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… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
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… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
A nation without dregs and malcontents, is orderly, decent, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image