747 Quotes by Eric Hoffer

The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment damned up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breath-taking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. He stages a world of make-believe so indispensable for the realization of self-sacrifice and united action.

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

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.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

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.

To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.

It is a paradox that in our time of drastic rapid change, when the future is in our midst devouring the present before our eyes, we have never been less certain about what is ahead of us.

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 Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor.