Eric Hoffer Quotes

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.

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

Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo.

A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.

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

When we are conscious of our worthlessness, we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are. If then we discover any similarity between them and us, we see it as irrefutable evidence of their worthlessness and inferiority. It is thus that with some people familiarity breeds contempt.

Contrary to what one would expect, it is easier for the advanced to imitate the backward than the other way around. The backward and the weak see in imitation an act of submission and a proof of their inadequacy. They must rid themselves of their sense of inferiority, must demonstrate their prowess, before they will open their minds and hearts to all that the world can teach them. Most often in history it was the conquerors who learned willingly from the conquered. The backward, says de Tocqueville, “will go forth in arms to gain knowledge but will not receive it when it comes to them.” Thus the grotesque truculence, posturing, conceit, brazenness, and defiance which usually assail our senses whenever a backward country sets out to modernize itself in a hurry stem partly from the desperate need of the weak for an illusion of strength and superiority if they are to imitate rapidly and easily.

Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

A good sentence is a key. It unlocks the mind of the reader.

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

ينزع الرجل إلى الاهتمام بشؤونه الخاصة عندما تكون جديرة بالاهتمام. أما عندما لا تكون لديه شؤون خاصة حقيقية, فإنه ينزع إلى نسيان شؤونه التي فقدت معناها والاهتمام بشؤون الآخرين الخاصة. يعبر هذا الاهتمام عن نفسه بالغيبة والتجسس والفضول, كما أنه يتجه إلى اهتمام غير طبيعي بالشؤون المجتمعية والقومية والعرقية. إننا عندما نهرب من أنفسنا نلقي بثقلنا على عاتق جارنا, أو نطبق على عنقه.

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket.

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

What counts most is holding on. The growth of a train of thought is not a direct forward flow. There is a succession of spurts separated by intervals of stagnation, frustration, and discouragement. If you hold on, there is bound to come a certain clarification. The unessential components drop off and a coherent, lucid whole begins to take shape.'''