Eric Hoffer Quotes

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.

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.

Not actual suffering but the hope of better things incites people to revolt.

The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

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

It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.

If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident.

We are made kind by being kind.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

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

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

No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.

It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have 'something worth fighting for' they do not feel like fighting.

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

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. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.

In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.

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

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.

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.