Top 114 Quotes by Eric Hoffer

There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.

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

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.

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.

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.