Eric hoffer quotes

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.

Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.

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

The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.

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.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.

Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.

No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

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

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

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

Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life

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.

The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

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.

Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self. Dedication in the obverse side of self-rejection. Man alone is a religious animal because, as Montaigne points out, it is a malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise ourselves.

When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom — freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.

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

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.

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.

We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.

The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.

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.

We cannot hate those who we despise.

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.

The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future... We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken.

We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

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.

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

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

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

It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites-opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity-where energies flow smoothly in one direction-there will be much doing but no music.

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.

We see through others only when we see through ourselves.

Far more critical than what we know or what we don't know is what we don't want to know.

Rudeness is the weak man's limitation of strength.

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.

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

Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.

No totalitarian censor can approach the implacability of the censor who controls the line of communication between the outer world and our consciousness. Nothing is allowed to reach us which might weaken our confidence and lower our morale. To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth.

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

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.

The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.

A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.

The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.

All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.

We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.

One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.

Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power.

For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.

To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.

To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.

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

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

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

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.

Rudeness luxuriates in the absence of self-respect.

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

The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. According to Renan, "The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men."

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.

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

The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.

The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.

The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.

One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.

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

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable animated instrument which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.

The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.

Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.

The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant. In an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self.

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.

The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.

A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

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

The education explosion is producing a vast number of people who want to live significant, important lives but lack the ability to satisfy this craving for importance by individual achievement. The country is being swamped with nobodies who want to be somebodies.

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

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.

Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were "the people," and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.

Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.

Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own. Whether it is our own meaningless self we are upholding, or some doctrine devoid of evidence, we can do it only in a frenzy of faith.

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

Children are the keys of paradise.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

All mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.

The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.

Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.

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.

To learn you need a certain degree of confidence, not too much and not too little. If you have too little confidence, you will think you can't learn. If you have too much, you will think you don't have to learn.

The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.

Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.