Famous Quotes

Quotes by Eric Hoffer

• Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.
• Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
• Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
• Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
• Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
• In times of change learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
• It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.
• It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
• It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
• It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
• It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.
• It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
• It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
• Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
• Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
• One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
• Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.
• Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
• Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
• Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
• The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
• The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
• The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
• The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
• The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
• The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
• The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
• There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
• There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
• Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
• To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
• We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
• We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true they ruin our dreams.
• 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.
• We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
• When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.
• Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.