Eric Hoffer

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

When people are free to do as they please they usually imitate each other.

It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.

Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story -- a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.

I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength.

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

A man by himself is in bad company.

You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.

To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.

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.

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.

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.

t sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

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.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.

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

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.

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.

The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives stimulants poisons opiates perfumes and stenches.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

The pre human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.

The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword and blood.

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

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

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

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.

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.

It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

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.

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

To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

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

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.

Intolerance is the 'Do Not Touch' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness.

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

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

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as fuel of achievement.

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

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.

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.

Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.

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

Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.

There is no alienation that a little power will not cure.

Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.

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

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

When people are bored it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.

The necessary has never been man s top priority.The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness.

The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.

Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we hav

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

There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

We feel free when we escape, even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire.

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

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is, rather, born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life.

There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

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

We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

Woe to him inside a non-conformist clique who does not conform to non-conformity.

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

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

A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.