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Capitalism
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Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
-Eric Hoffer
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Change
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
-Eric Hoffer
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The well adjusted make poor prophets. A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic change. We cling to what we call our common sense, our practical point of view. Actually, these are names for an all-absorbing familiarity with things as they are.... Thus it happens that when the times become unhinged, it is the practical people who are caught unaware...still clinging to things that no longer exist.
-Eric Hoffer
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Chastity
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There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
-Eric Hoffer
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Communication
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To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
-Eric Hoffer
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Communism
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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
-Eric Hoffer
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Confidence
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We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs inordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
-Eric Hoffer
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Conformity & Nonconformity
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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
-Eric Hoffer
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Conversation
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We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
-Eric Hoffer
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Corruption
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We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.
-Eric Hoffer
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Cowardice/Weakness
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When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
-Eric Hoffer
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Death
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Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
-Eric Hoffer
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How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
-Eric Hoffer
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It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
-Eric Hoffer
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Deception/Lying
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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.
-Eric Hoffer
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
-Eric Hoffer
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Depression
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
-Eric Hoffer
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Despair
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Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
-Eric Hoffer
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Discontent
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
-Eric Hoffer
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It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
-Eric Hoffer
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Dissent
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The beginning of thought is in disagreement -- not only with others but also with ourselves.
-Eric Hoffer
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Doubt
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The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
-Eric Hoffer
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Dreams
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We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
-Eric Hoffer
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Evil
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
-Eric Hoffer
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Evolution
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The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.
-Eric Hoffer
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Books by and about Eric Hoffer