Eric Hoffer Quotes (210 Quotes)

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.

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

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.

Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.

Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.

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.

To spell out the obvious is often to call it into question.