Eric Hoffer Quotes - Page 2

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have 'something worth fighting for' they do not feel like fighting.

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

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

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. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.

The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.

Not actual suffering but the hope of better things incites people to revolt.

There is a radicalism in all getting and a conservatism in all keeping. Lovemaking is radical while marriage is conservative.

The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.

We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true they ruin our dreams.

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.

We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but its own talents.

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.

When people are bored it is primarily with their own selves.

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