Eric Hoffer

“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.”

“The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.”

“Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.”

“The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.”

“Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.”

“We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.”

“We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.”

“Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.”

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

“The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.”

“There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.”

“The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”

“It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.”

“Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.”

“It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.”

“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”

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

“The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.”

“Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.”

“A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.”