Eric Hoffer Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

268 Famous Quotes by Eric Hoffer
“It is not actual suffering but a taste of better things which excites people to revolt.”
Politics / government Quotes
“When people revolt in a totalitarian society, they rise not against the wickedness of the regime but its weakness.”
Politics / government Quotes
“There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse. The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.”
Politics / government Quotes
“Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.”
Politics / government Quotes
“No one has a right to happiness.”
Politics / government Quotes
“The danger inherent in reform is that the cure may be worse than the disease. Reform is an operation on the social body; but unlike medical surgeons, reformers are not on guard against unpredictable side effects which may divert the course of reform toward unwanted results. Moreover, quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.”
Politics / government Quotes
“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.”
Politics / government Quotes
“Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.”
Politics / government Quotes
“Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.”
Politics / government Quotes
“Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. 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.”
Politics / government Quotes
“The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.”
Politics / government Quotes
“The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.”
Politics / government Quotes
“Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.”
Politics / government Quotes
“It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power- power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.”
Politics / government Quotes
“The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor made it easy for him to acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness. For he derives his sense of usefulness mainly from directing, instructing, and planning- from minding other people's business- and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.”
Politics / government Quotes
“Every device employed to bolster individual freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of the absoluteness of power. The indications are that such an impairment is brought about not by strengthening the individual and pitting him against the possessors of power, but by distributing and diversifying power and pitting one category or unit of power against the other. Where power is one, the defeated individual, however strong and resourceful, can have no refuge and no recourse.”
Politics / government Quotes
“A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.”
Politics / government Quotes
“Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.”
All about love Quotes
“The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of thr majority in the middle.”
History Quotes
“No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.”
All about the self Quotes
“The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything. - The Passionate State of the Mind, 1954.”
Appearance Quotes
“It is easier to love humanity than to love one's neighbor.”
Brotherhood Quotes
“Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.”
Computer / technology / science Quotes
“How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.”
Death Quotes
“The greatest weariness comes from work not done.”
Discontent Quotes
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