We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us. - Eric Hoffer
To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance. - Eric Hoffer
It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay. - Eric Hoffer
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
We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but its own talents. - Eric Hoffer
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. - Eric Hoffer
To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world. - Eric Hoffer
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. - Eric Hoffer
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. - Eric Hoffer
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other. - Eric Hoffer
We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves. - Eric Hoffer
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. - Eric Hoffer
The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. - Eric Hoffer
We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind. - Eric Hoffer
Our great weariness comes from work not done. - Eric Hoffer
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. - Eric Hoffer
The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. - Eric Hoffer
We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys. - Eric Hoffer
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 proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it. - Eric Hoffer
We feel free when we escape -- even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire. - Eric Hoffer
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat. - Eric Hoffer
We cannot be sure that we have something to live for unless we are ready to die for it. - Eric Hoffer
The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way. - Eric Hoffer
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. - Eric Hoffer
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves. - Eric Hoffer
There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size. - Eric Hoffer
The nature of society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow-by the tilt of the social landscape. - Eric Hoffer
The greatest weariness comes from work not done. - Eric Hoffer
Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity - Eric Hoffer
To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not. - Eric Hoffer
We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents. - Eric Hoffer
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. - Eric Hoffer
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them. - Eric Hoffer
The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without. - Eric Hoffer
Anger is the prelude to courage. - Eric Hoffer
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past. - Eric Hoffer
We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white. - Eric Hoffer
One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard. - Eric Hoffer
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. - Eric Hoffer
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. - Eric Hoffer
It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living. - Eric Hoffer
All leaders strive to turn their followers into children. - Eric Hoffer
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. - Eric Hoffer
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities. - Eric Hoffer
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
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. - Eric Hoffer
We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends. - Eric Hoffer
He who has nothing and wants something is less frustrated than he who has something and wants more. - Eric Hoffer
It is easier to love humanity as a whole that to love one's neighbor. - Eric Hoffer
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. - Eric Hoffer
The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it. - Eric Hoffer
The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents. - Eric Hoffer
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
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. - Eric Hoffer
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax. - Eric Hoffer
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
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet. - Eric Hoffer
People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self. - Eric Hoffer
It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. but business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. - Eric Hoffer
No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart. - Eric Hoffer
We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us. - Eric Hoffer
Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others. - Eric Hoffer
We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire. - Eric Hoffer