Eric Hoffer

Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.

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

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

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

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

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?

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.