Eric Hoffer Quotes

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

Believe me, if a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

Death is with you all the time; you get deeper in it as you move towards it, but it's not unfamiliar to you. It's always been there, so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life.

I almost moved into a place over a funeral parlor. My father said, 'That's just too macabre,' but I thought I'd be embracing my mortality. I told him it would keep me grounded - like when people get skull tattoos.

I've learned to accept death better than most people.

I'm not afraid of death. How can you be afraid of something that's inevitable?

I don't ever want to get to the point where I don't think about death! You've got to swim in it, learn from it - embrace it!

I have come to know that it [death] is an important thing to keep in mind - not to complain or to make melancholy, but simply because only with the honest knowledge that one day I will die I can ever truly begin to live.

Life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life.

Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it.

I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.

Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy.

One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of it.

There’s an old Ritadarion saying. You’re never more alive than when you walk hand in hand with death. (Syn)

Only by being prepared for your death can you ever truly live.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

An absolute condition of all successful living, whether for an individual or a nation, is the acceptance of death.

I used to think the only way to be truly alive is to confront your mortality.

How would you feel about life if Death was your older sister?

I've come to look upon death the same way I look upon root-canal work. Everyone else seems to get through it all right, so it couldn't be too difficult for me.

Death is Life's high meed.

If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.

Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.

Only when you know how to die can you know how to live.