218 quotes
There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.
The ignorant are a reservoir of daring.
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
It is the individual only who is timeless.
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Fanatical orthodoxy is in all movements a late development. It comes when the movement is in full possession of power and can impose its faith by force as well as by persuasion.
The True Believer (1951)
How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant.
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
It is the average man of today who shows the most striking differences from people of other ages and civilizations. The rebel of today is twin brother of rebels in all ages and climes.
True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.
Not only does the intellectual's penchant for tutoring, directing, and regulating promote a regimented social pattern, but his craving for the momentous is bound to foster an austere seriousness inhospitable to the full play of freedom.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
When people are free to do as we please, they usually imitate each other.
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)