Quotes By Eric Hoffer

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

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

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

It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

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

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.

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

It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

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

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

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.