Eric Hoffer Quotes

471 quotes in 4535 categories

• It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
• It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
• To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
• A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own…
• The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the…
• We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest.
• Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that…
• How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
• The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few…
• The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born…
• It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while…
• Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is…
• If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or…
• The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not…
• To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness,…
• It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
• Anger is a prelude to courage.
• Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
• To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers…
• The Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor.

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