Eric Hoffer
58 quotations
The real antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.
Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
To the old, the new is usually bad news.
To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.
Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
A man by himself is in bad company.
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
Youth itself is a talent -- a perishable talent.