747 Quotes by Eric Hoffer

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.

There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.