A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
Eric Hoffer

A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
Eric Hoffer

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
Eric Hoffer

A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
Eric Hoffer

A man by himself is in bad company.
Eric Hoffer

A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
Eric Hoffer

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
Eric Hoffer

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Eric Hoffer

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
Eric Hoffer

Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
Eric Hoffer


Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.
Eric Hoffer

Children are the keys of paradise.
Eric Hoffer

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Eric Hoffer

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

Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
Eric Hoffer

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
Eric Hoffer

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Eric Hoffer

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
Eric Hoffer

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

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
Eric Hoffer