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Hate
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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.
-Eric Hoffer
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Heresy
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A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
-Eric Hoffer
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History
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
-Eric Hoffer
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Humanity
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Man was nature's mistake --she neglected to finish him -- and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
-Eric Hoffer
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Identity
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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
-Eric Hoffer
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No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.
-Eric Hoffer
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Ignorance & Stupidity
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An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
-Eric Hoffer
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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
-Eric Hoffer
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Imitation
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
-Eric Hoffer
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Immigration
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It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
-Eric Hoffer
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Individuality
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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, Reflections on the Human Condition (Aphorism 183), 1973
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Innovation
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Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
-Eric Hoffer
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Judging, Judgment
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We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
-Eric Hoffer
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Kindness
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Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
-Eric Hoffer
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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
-Eric Hoffer
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
-Eric Hoffer
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Leadership
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It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
-Eric Hoffer
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Learning
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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
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Legacy
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The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.
-Eric Hoffer
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Life
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The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
-Eric Hoffer
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Marriage
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There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
-Eric Hoffer
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Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in life, a new future and a new identity (a new name). The boredom of spinsters and of women who can no longer find joy and fulfillment in marriage stems from an awareness of a barren, spoiled life. By embracing a holy cause and dedicating their energies and substance to its advancement, they find a new life full of purpose and meaning.
-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (Part II - The Potential Converts; ch.10)
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Masses
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There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before.
-Eric Hoffer
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Mediocrity
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The real antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
-Eric Hoffer
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Minorities
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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
-Eric Hoffer
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Books by and about Eric Hoffer