Eric Hoffer (1902–83) was an American moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Ignorance
Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern. – Hoffer, Eric
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Storytelling
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
—Eric Hoffer
Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Opportunity
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Passion
Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Death, Dying
Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Change
We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Conversation
Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man’s spirit than when we win his heart. For we can win a man’s heart one day and lose it the next. But when we break a proud spirit we achieve something that is final and absolute.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Power
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Leadership
There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before.
—Eric Hoffer
The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Belief
A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Protest
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Hate, Hatred
A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Nation
It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites—opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity—where energies flow smoothly in one direction—there will be much doing but no music.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Music, Art
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Questions
Anger is a prelude to courage.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Courage, Anger
Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in life, a new future and a new identity (a new name). The boredom of spinsters and of women who can no longer find joy and fulfillment in marriage stems from an awareness of a barren, spoiled life. By embracing a holy cause and dedicating their energies and substance to its advancement, they find a new life full of purpose and meaning.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Marriage
There is radicalism in all getting and conservatism in all keeping. Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Marriage
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
—Eric Hoffer
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Affectation
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.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Opportunity, Desire, Dreams, Talent
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Motivation
Our greatest weariness comes from work not done.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Work, Discontent
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Understanding, Marriage
Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Waste
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Difficulty, Stupidity
They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.
—Eric Hoffer
Topics: Failure, Awareness
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