Eric Hoffer the Writer, biography, facts and quotes

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

"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"

"Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from"

"Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true"

"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"

"I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind"

"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head"

"Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible"

"It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence"

"It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor"

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

"To the old, the new is usually bad news"

"Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident"

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

"The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything"

"The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully"

"The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves"

"Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith"

"Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor"

"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"

"One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action"

"Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect"

"Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do"

"Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners"

"Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake"

"There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other"

"There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his"

"There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size"

"There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house"

"There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive"

"The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist"

"The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself"

"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings"

"The greatest weariness comes from work not done"

"Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play"

"When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths"

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other"

"When people are bored it is primarily with themselves"

"When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion"

"What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?"

"We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution"

"We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves"

"To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question"

"To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance"

"Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something"

"Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know"

"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves"

"Facts are counterrevolutionary"

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

"Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself"

Occup.	Writer
From	USA
Born	July 25, 1902 New York City, New York, USA
Died	May 21, 1983 San Francisco, California, USA
Cause	Natural Causes
Aged	80 years

Eric Hoffer Biography

86 Famous quotes by Eric Hoffer