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.

Children are the keys of paradise.

Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

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.

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

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.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.