Eric Hoffer

It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

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.

It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.

A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

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

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

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.