Eric Hoffer Quotes

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.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.

Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.

You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others – that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.

Resistance, whether to one’s appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.

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.

There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

Vaguely at first, then more distinctly, I realized that man is an eternal stranger on this planet.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the passionate state of mind.

Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.