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Eric Hoffer

172 quotes

• “To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Our greatest weariness comes from work not done.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “That which is unique and worthwhile in us makes itself felt only in flashes. If we do not know how to catch and savor the flashes we are without growth and exhilaration.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Also quoted in Between the Devil and the Dragon : The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer (1982)

• “The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were "the people," and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To think out a problem is not unlike drawing a caricature. You have to exaggerate the salient point and leave out that which is not typical. "To illustrate a principle," says Bagehot, "you must exaggerate much and you must omit much." As to the quantity of absolute truth in a thought: it seems to me the more comprehensive and unobjectionable a thought becomes, the more clumsy and unexciting it gets. I like half-truths of a certain kind — they are interesting and they stimulate.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1950)

• “There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing — as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1950)

• “Perhaps people throw themselves into heated polemics to give content to their lives, to warm their hearts. What Luther said of hatred is true of all quarreling. There is nothing like a feud to make life seem full and interesting.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1950)

• “It is not good for our efforts at self-realization to know the opinions other people have of us. It is difficult or perhaps impossible to be ourselves if we are known.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1951)

• “What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1951)

• “I am more and more convinced that taking life over-seriously is a frivolous thing. There is an affected self-dramatizing in the brooding over one's prospects and destiny. The trifling attitude of an Ecclesiastes is essentially sober and serious. It is in closer touch with the so-called eternal truths than are the most penetrating metaphysical probing and the most sensitive poetic insights.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1952)

• “This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1952)

• “The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time — not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1952)

• “The sense of worth derived from creative work depends upon "recognition" by others, which is never automatic. As a result, the path of self-realization, even when it is the only open one, is taken with reluctance. Men of talent have to be goaded to engage in creative work. The groans and laments of even the most gifted and prolific echo through the ages.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1953)

• “Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1953)

• “To think for oneself is not only, as Gide said, counterrevolutionary but also apostasy and, at certain times, treason.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1953)

• “By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1954)

• “The most important point is — and remains — not to take oneself seriously. There is no past, and, certainly, no future. There are but a few years — ten at the most. You pass your days as best you can, doing as little harm as possible. Let the desires be few and treat expectations as weeds. You read, scribble as the spirit moves you, hear some new music, see every week the few people you are attached to. Again: guard yourself, above all, against self-dramatization, a feeling of importance, and the sprouting of expectations.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1954)

• “It is precisely because we can never really know ourselves, but only guess, that we are so vehement about the good and the evil ascribed to us by others. In maintaining ourselves against all comers, we are maintaining something that is unknown, uncertain, and never wholly provable. We need a chorus of consent, and we are engaged in an unceasing proselytizing campaign in our own behalf.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1954)

• “How terribly hard and almost impossible it is to tell the truth. More than anything else, the artist in us prevents us from telling aught as it really happened. We deal with the truth as the cook deals with meat and vegetables.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1954)

• “In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo's definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1954)

• “A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1954)

• “It is the Frenchman's readiness to exaggerate that is at the root of his intellectual lucidity and also of his capacity for acknowledging merit. The English were not afraid to exaggerate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they were then not far behind the French in the lucidity of their thinking.... There is hardly a single instance of cultural vigor marked by moderation in expression.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1954)

• “It has been my experience that there is no substitute for time where thinking is concerned. Why is it so? The answer seems to be that in many cases to think means to be able to allow the mind to stray from the task at hand. The mind must be able to be "elsewhere." This needs time.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1955)

• “Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1955)

• “We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1955)

• “The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance — of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1956)

• “One is not quite certain that creativeness in the arts, literature, and science functions best in an environment of absolute freedom. Chances are that a relatively mild tyranny stimulates creativeness.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1956)

• “Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a lump. And it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes, it is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1956)

• “Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals; yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1956)

• “It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves — not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1956)

• “To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1957)

• “Good writing, like gold, combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1957)

• “I have never felt that I had a thought too profound for others to understand. On the contrary, it always seemed to me axiomatic that what was clear to me should be clear and easy to everyone else. This despite the fact that it often took me years to grope my way to an idea.... I can spend days and even months on a single sentence. I do not know how to skip. To think and write with me is like putting brick on brick.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1959)

• “How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant. It is a vice of the scientific method when applied to human affairs that it fosters hemming and hawing and a scrupulousness that easily degenerates into obscurity and meaninglessness.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1960)

• “Flaubert and Nietzsche have emphasized the importance of standing up and walking in the process of thinking. The peripatetics were perhaps motivated by the same awareness. Yet purposeful walking — what we call marching — is an enemy of thought and is used as a powerful instrument for the suppression of independent thought and the inculcation of unquestioned obedience.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1960)

• “Total innovation is a flight from comparison and also from imitation. Those who discover things for themselves and express them in their own way are not overly bothered by the fact that others have already discovered these things — have even discovered them over and over again — and have expressed what they found in all manner of ways.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1960)

• “What counts most is holding on. The growth of a train of thought is not a direct forward flow. There is a succession of spurts separated by intervals of stagnation, frustration, and discouragement. If you hold on, there is bound to come a certain clarification. The unessential components drop off and a coherent, lucid whole begins to take shape.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1961)

• “Originality is not something continuous but something intermittent — a flash of the briefest duration. One must have the time and be watchful (be attuned) to catch the flash and fix it. One must know how to catch and preserve these scant flakes of gold sluiced out of the sand and rocks of everyday life. Originality does not come nugget-size.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1961)

• “A good sentence is a key. It unlocks the mind of the reader.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1962)

• “As a full-time longshoreman I am necessarily more a scribbler than a writer. But I am also so by inclination. The writing I can enjoy is the sketching of an idea in a few dozen words — two hundred at most. Elaboration and expansion are for me hard going. An article of several thousand words becomes inevitably a mosaic of ideas — a series of ideas stuck together.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1962)

• “Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1967)

• “Disraeli felt that "nothing could compensate his obscure youth, not even a glorious old age." Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences — nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.”

  Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Entry (1977)

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