How it works

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.

Eric Hoffer
Not a MindZip member yet
Men
Power
Idea
Evil
Malice
Opinion
Remarkable
Random

Explore more quotes

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Eric Hoffer
Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
Eric Hoffer
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
Eric Hoffer
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Eric Hoffer
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
Eric Hoffer
When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.
Eric Hoffer
A man by himself is in bad company.
Eric Hoffer
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.
Eric Hoffer
To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
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
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
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Eric Hoffer
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
Eric Hoffer
Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
Eric Hoffer
Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
Eric Hoffer
It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
Eric Hoffer
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.
Eric Hoffer
The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
Eric Hoffer
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
Eric Hoffer
Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
Eric Hoffer
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Eric Hoffer
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
Eric Hoffer
A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
Eric Hoffer
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.
Eric Hoffer
It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
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
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
Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.
Eric Hoffer
It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer
Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
Eric Hoffer
We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.
Eric Hoffer
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
Eric Hoffer
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
Eric Hoffer
The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
Eric Hoffer
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Eric Hoffer
Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
Eric Hoffer
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer
When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
Eric Hoffer
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.
Eric Hoffer
When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
Eric Hoffer
Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
Eric Hoffer
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
Eric Hoffer
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
Eric Hoffer
The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
Eric Hoffer
It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
Eric Hoffer
Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
Eric Hoffer
Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
Eric Hoffer