Quotes By Eric Hoffer

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.

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

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

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

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.

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.

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

It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.

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.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.

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.

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.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

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.

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

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.

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