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Portrait of Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer

(1902–1983) Writer United States

658 quotes in 2193 categories

Hoffer’s insights cut through the noise of collective behavior. These 658 brief statements offer a clear, sometimes stark view of how groups form, how individuals resist, and what drives societal shifts.

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Eric Hoffer was a writer from the United States, best known for The True Believer:Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.

Quick Facts About Eric Hoffer

Born: July 25, 1902
Died: May 21, 1983
Nationality: United States
Profession: Writer
Notable works: The True Believer:Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Known for: The Ordeal of Change

About Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer was an American philosopher and social critic. A moderate with an atypical working-class background, Hoffer wrote ten books over his career and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer (1951), was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that The Ordeal of Change (1963) was his finest work. The Eric Hoffer Book Award is an international literary prize established in his honor. The University of California, Berkeley awards an annual literary prize named jointly for Hoffer.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Awards & Honors

Presidential Medal of Freedom

Quotes by Eric Hoffer

No one has a right to happiness

Happiness

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Communists are frustrated capitalists.

Capitalist

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Anger is a prelude to courage.

Anger

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Facts are counterrevolutionary.

Facts

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Those of little faith are of little hatred.

Faith

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I always held my flower in a clenched fist.

Fist

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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Loudest

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We are made kind by being kind.

Be kind

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Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.

Enemies

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Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.

Experience

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The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

Fooled

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The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.

Ahead

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There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

Fail

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

Deceive

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“You can never have enough of that which you don’t need.”

Need

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It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.

Belief

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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

Experience

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It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo…

Example

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“Empathy, alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.”

Apart

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There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into…

Ability

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

Change

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

Adjustment

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In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.

Anxiety

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It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

Expression

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When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom — freedom to hate,…

Betray

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The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. According to Renan, "The day…

Atheism

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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. It is futile to judge a kind deed…

Kindness

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For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march,…

Age

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The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on…

Born

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To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis…

Acceptance

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The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were…

Capitalist

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God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: "I am what I am." Unlike God, man strives with all…

I am what i am

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Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is…

Animal

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When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their…

Action

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It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts…

Doe

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To think out a problem is not unlike drawing a caricature. You have to exaggerate the salient point and leave out that…

Absolute truth

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Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in…

Accessories

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

Aesthetic

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

Arrogance

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Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in life, a new future…

Advancement

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Eric Hoffer by topic

Self (74) Men (70) People (55) Life (55) Inspirational (44) Love (36) True believer (35) World (33) Society (33) Individual (33) Faith (33) Time (31) Religion (31) Nature (31) Freedom (31) Action (27) Mass (26) Humans (26) Movement (25) Desire (25) Identity (24) Way (23) Success (23) Psychology (22) Seems (21)