Eric Hoffer Quotes

471 quotes in 4535 categories

• Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human…
• Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a…
• In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in…
• There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it
• When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is…
• Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism…
• The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause. God wishes, said Calvin, that one should…
• Unity and self-sacrifice, of themselves, even when fostered by the most noble means, produce a facility for hating. Even when men league themselves mightily together…
• It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into…
• The readiness to praise others indicates a desire for excellence and perhaps an ability to realize it.
• The burning conviction that we have a holy duty towards others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What…
• Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.
• It seems that when we are oppressed by the knowledge of our worthlessness we do not see ourselves as lower than some and higher than…
• Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
• A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.
• Take man's most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then…
• Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals…
• The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.
• The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
• Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.

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