Eric Hoffer

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.

The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

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

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

Anger is the prelude to courage.

No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

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

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

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.

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith__aith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.

If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.