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Eric Hoffer Quotes | Quotes said by Eric Hoffer

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #1

    Anger is the prelude to courage.


  • Eric Hoffer Quote #2

    Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #3

    Children are the keys of paradise.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #4

    Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #5

    Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #6

    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 a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven and who believed that nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #7

    Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #8

    Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #9

    Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #10

    Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #11

    Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #12

    If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #13

    If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #14

    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 how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #15

    In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #16

    In modern times, nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #17

    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 apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
    Nature has no compassion. It is, in the words of William Blake, a creation that groans, living on the death; where fish and bird and beast and tree and metal and stone live by devouring. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #18

    In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #19

    In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #20

    It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #21

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

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #22

    It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #23

    It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #24

    It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #25

    Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #26

    Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #27

    Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #28

    Nature of the Desire for Change:

    There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on. “If anything ail a man,” says Thoreau, “so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming—the world.”

    It is understandable that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failure. The remarkable thing is that the successful, too, however much they pride themselves on their foresight, fortitude, thrift and other “sterling qualities,” are at bottom convinced that their success is the result of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. The self-confidence of even the consistently successful is never absolute. They are never sure that they know all the ingredients which go into the making of their success. The outside world seems to them a precariously balanced mechanism, and so long as it ticks in their favor they are afraid to tinker with it. Thus the resistance to change and the ardent desire for it spring from the same conviction, and the one can be as vehement as the other.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #29

    Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.

  • Eric Hoffer Quote #30

    Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

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