747 Quotes by Eric Hoffer

In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

People haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.

To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.

The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas .