Eric Hoffer
It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.Collection: Sad
Successful action tends to become an end in itself.Collection: Success
The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.Collection: Loneliness
The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.Collection: Sap
Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.Collection: Religion
To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.Collection: Life Is
No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments.Collection: Thinking
There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished...Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.Collection: Happiness
Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a lump. And it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes, it is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.Collection: Missing
To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.Collection: Creative
There is a radicalism in all getting, and a conservatism in all keeping. Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative.Collection: Marriage
There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movementCollection: Lying
Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man. It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.Collection: Animal
The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation.Collection: Self
It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.Collection: Failure
I always held my flower in a clenched fist.Collection: Flower
Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.Collection: Experience
The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves.Collection: Reflection
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity.Collection: Equality
Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.Collection: Intellectual
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.Collection: Hate
Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.Collection: Type
There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgment.Collection: Men
The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.Collection: Desire
Poverty when coupled with creativeness is usually free of frustration. This is true of the poor artisan skilled in his trade and of the poor writer, artist, and scientist in the full possession of creative powers. Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out. The decline of handicrafts in modern times is perhaps one of the causes for the rise of frustration and the increased susceptibility of the individual to mass movements.Collection: Self Confidence
It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.Collection: Selfish
It seems that when we are oppressed by the knowledge of our worthlessness we do not see ourselves as lower than some and higher than others, but as lower than the lowest of mankind. We hate then the whole world, and we would pour our wrath upon the whole of creation.Collection: Hate
Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.Collection: Kindness
It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for,they do not feel like fighting.Collection: Fighting
The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.Collection: Artist
First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.Collection: Ideas
A person's creative ability decreases in direct proportion to the degree to which he takes himself seriously.Collection: Creative
The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. 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.Collection: Art
There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.Collection: Liberty
We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.Collection: Equality
The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.Collection: Liberty
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.Collection: Fighting
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.Collection: Country
It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.Collection: Sacrifice
Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter unworthiness can be a source of courage.Collection: Courage
It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice – that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt – are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.Collection: Strong