Eric Hoffer

Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They read more

Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They become responsive to grandiose schemes, and will display unequaled steadfastness, formidable energies and a special fitness in the performance of tasks which would stump superior people. It seems paradoxical that defeat in dealing with the possible should embolden people to attempt the impossible, but a familiarity with the mentality of the weak reveals that what seems a path of daring is actually an easy way out: It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings. For when we fail in attaining the impossible we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.

We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight read more

We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and beget action; they kill and revive, corrupt and cure. The "men-of-words"- priests, prophets, intellectuals- have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

Whence come these hatreds...? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, read more

Whence come these hatreds...? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt and other shortcomings of the self. Self-contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others- and there is a most determined and persistent effort to mask this switch.

It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict read more

It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.