Eric Hoffer Quotes

Credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.

Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.

We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth?

The people who lie the most are nearly always the clumsiest at it, and they're easier to fool with lies than most people, too. You'd think they'd be on the look-out for lies, but they seem to be the very ones that will believe almost anything at all.

If you are often deceived by those around you, you may be sure that you deserve to be deceived; and that instead of railing at the general falseness of mankind, you have first to pronounce judgment on your own jealous tyranny, or on your own weak credulity.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Am I a fool? I don't think I'm a fool. But I think I sure was fooled.

I don't consider myself to be that credulous.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

The more you are in public life, the more you wonder at the credulity of the average human being.

One immutable trait of the gullible is that they are credulous to a fault. Though no-doubt well-meaning, the naive are Trump's base.

Those who know nothing must believe everything.

The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar.

People are more likely to believe a big lie than a small one.

The Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation almost anyone will believe almost anything.

I wonder how it is that I’m fooling so many people, I’m doing one of the most stupid things in the world…and people seem to be falling for it.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

Sometimes a certain innocence is good, but not about yourself.

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

Take you me for a sponge?

Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. . .

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.