747 Quotes by Eric Hoffer

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.

All through the ages schoolmasters seem to have had the delusion that they could order society as readily as they could a classroom.

Now and then I am inclined to think that the passion to teach, which is far more powerful and primitive than the passion to learn, is a a factor in the rise of mass movements. For what do we see in the Communist world? Half of the globe has been turned into a vast schoolroom with a thousand million pupils at the mercy of a band of maniacal schoolmasters.

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

If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

I am still tired, and I begin to realize that the cure for tiredness is not rest.

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

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.