Classy Quote logo
  • Home
  • Categories
  • Authors
  • Topics
  • Who said

Eric Hoffer Quotes

Eric Hoffer quote from classy quote

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Belief Movements Philosophy Politics

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Living Together Mankind Philosophy Society Understanding

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Happiness Search Sources

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

Eric Hoffer Inspiration Talent

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Motivation Obstacles Opportunity

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Escape Freedom Frying Pan To Fire

If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Communism Politics Progress The True Believer

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.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Politics

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven and who believed that nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Politics Progress Progressivism The True Believer

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

Eric Hoffer Change Learning

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Energy Work

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Heart Literacy

Anger is the prelude to courage.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Anger Courage

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Creativity Nature Order Randomness

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

Eric Hoffer Change Management Learning

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Christianity Jesus Marx Marxism

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Beginning Beliefs Critical Thinking Critical Thought Disagreement Evaluation Self Self Evaluation Thought Views

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.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Desire Frustration Need Want

Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Action Ideas

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Self Awareness

In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes--courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc.--can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.Nature has no compassion. It is, in the words of William Blake, a creation that groans, living on the death; where fish and bird and beast and tree and metal and stone live by devouring. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Dragon Man Nature

The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Anarchy Beaurocracy Freedom Government Libertarian Liberty Politics Socialism Statism Statists Voluntaryism Welfare State

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Capitalism Mass Movement

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Conformity Individuality

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Collectivism Excellence Individuality Nation Religion

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor. (Eric Hoffer 1902-1983)

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Acheivement Persistence Talent

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Rudeness Weakness

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.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Fundamentalism Sociology Terrorism

If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Adolescence Teenage Angst Teenagers

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.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Atheist Cynic Fanatic

There is perhaps some hope to be derived from the fact that in most instances where an attempt to realize an ideal society gave birth to the ugliness and violence of a prolonged active mass movement the experiment was made on a vast scale and with a heterogeneous population. Such was the case in the rise of Christianity and Islam, and in the French, Russian and Nazi revolutions. The promising communal settlements in the small state of Israel and the successful programs of socialization in the small Scandinavian states indicate perhaps that when the attempt to realize an ideal society is undertaken by a small nation with a more or less homogeneous population it can proceed and succeed in an atmosphere which is neither hectic nor coercive.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Diversity The True Believer

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Art Artist

When people are bored it is primarily with their own selves.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Bores Boredom

When people are bored it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Boring Days

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Change Transience

It is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Character Personality

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

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Conviction Belief

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Creating Positive Change

Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Creating Positive Change

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

~ Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer Doubts Uncertainties
Load More classy quote icon
  • Classy Quote

    ClassyQuote has been providing 500000+ famous quotes from 40000+ popular authors to our worldwide community.

  • Other Pages

    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
  • Our Products

    • Chrome Extention
    • Microsoft Edge Add-on
  • Follow Us

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
Copyright © 2025 ClassyQuote. All rights reserved.