Eric Hoffer Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

268 Famous Quotes by Eric Hoffer
“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
Enemies Quotes
“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.”
Frustration Quotes
“Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains”
Mountains Quotes
“The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.”
Power Quotes
“What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?”
Reassurance Quotes
“Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength”
Rudeness Quotes
“Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth”
Self-sacrifice Quotes
“It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.”
Uniqueness Quotes
“The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.”
Leaders Quotes
“To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.”
Resentment Quotes
“It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.”
Weakness Quotes
“The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.”
Age Quotes
“Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.”
Exaggeration Quotes
“Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.”
Fatigue Quotes
“It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.”
Frustration Quotes
“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. How naive the cliche that money is the root of evil!”
Genocide Quotes
“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”
Hatred Quotes
“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.”
Malice Quotes
“The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.”
Needs Quotes
“To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.”
Obvious Quotes
“It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.”
Opposites Quotes
“There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it”
Opposites Quotes
“The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.”
Persuasion Quotes
“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.”
Salvation Quotes
“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.”
Politics / government Quotes
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