Eric Hoffer Quotes

"No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart."
-Eric Hoffer

"The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way."
-Eric Hoffer

"Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay."
-Eric Hoffer

"There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet."
-Eric Hoffer

"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."
-Eric Hoffer

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

"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."
-Eric Hoffer in Religion quotes.

"Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others."
-Eric Hoffer

"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbors as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant of 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."
-Eric Hoffer

"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves."
-Eric Hoffer

"The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without."
-Eric Hoffer

"The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility."
-Eric Hoffer

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."
-Eric Hoffer

"We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves."
-Eric Hoffer

"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings."
-Eric Hoffer

"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."
-Eric Hoffer

"To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world."
-Eric Hoffer

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
-Eric Hoffer

"We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us."
-Eric Hoffer

"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."
-Eric Hoffer in Invention quotes.

"In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
-Eric Hoffer

"One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard."
-Eric Hoffer

"Successful action tends to become an end in itself."
-Eric Hoffer in Success quotes.

"Take man's most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it."
-Eric Hoffer

"We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white."
-Eric Hoffer

"Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."
-Eric Hoffer

"We cannot be sure that we have something to live for unless we are ready to die for it."
-Eric Hoffer