Eric Hoffer
Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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.
One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
A man by himself is in bad company.
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
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.
The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
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.
When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.
Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
Facts are counterrevolutionary.
It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.
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.
With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.
It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.