Eric Hoffer Quotes

I have never met a man who has given me as much trouble as myself.

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that.

An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.

There's always going to be a war going on inside of me. That's just, I think, my make-up.

The voice of the intelligence ... is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is hissed away by hate, and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance.

Everyone has monsters and demons within themselves. They're metaphors for the human condition.

Fear and Guilt are the only enemies of man.

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!

My life would be constrained by the horror and fierce rage that my appearance inspired, but I would know peace as well as fear, tenderness as well as brutality, and even love in a time of cruelty.

There's still such chaos in me. Still so little firmly outlined. Just like my face: a formless mass that only takes on shape through the expression of the moment. The searching for our selves is the most agonizing

...one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do--out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation--look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.

He's hell bent for destruction, he's afraid and confused, and his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.

Fearing not that I'd become my enemy In the instant that I preach

I didn't tell him that what I was most scared of, most haunted by, was something I didn't understand and could never run away from. It was myself.

I feel like a small battlefield in which the problems, or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can hope to do is keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield. After all, the problems must be accommodated, have somewhere to struggle and come to rest and we, poor little humans, must put our inner space at their service and not run away.

The world will be at war as long as the mind is at war with itself. If we can't find peace within ourselves, where is the hope for peace in the world?

Sometimes you can get so far in yourself that you don't know who you are.

God defend me from myself.

i am a limitless series of natural disasters and all of these disasters have been unnaturally repressed.

You can be strapped to the most stable chair and still feel the world give way beneath you.

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself

To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.

Feelings and stories of unworthiness and shame are perhaps the most binding element in the trance of fear. When we believe something is wrong with us, we are convinced we are in danger. Our shame fuels ongoing fear, and our fear fuels more shame. The very fact that we feel fear seems to prove that we are broken or incapable. When we are trapped in trance, being fearful and bad seem to define who we are. The anxiety in our body, the stories, the ways we make excuses, withdraw or lash out—these become to us the self that is most real.