Eric Hoffer Quotes

There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.

I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.

Sometimes the world seems like a big hole. You spend all your life shouting down it and all you hear are echoes of some idiot yelling nonsense down a hole.

Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.

I wonder if anyone will ever know the emptiness of my life. Personal Diary -- Last entry Oh whats the point?

Ah, who will save me from existing? It's neither death nor life that I want.

Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society.

I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed's coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning. I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning. I was much too far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.

Just having the pain of being alive without anything else, whether it's good or bad. There's a lot of serious songs on the record, you know. That song is just about feeling like a fish out of water, feeling like you don't belong on the planet sometimes.

In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

It's really easy to slide into a depression fueled by the pointlessness of existence.

Maybe the universe will get tired of me.

If I was to say I had a life, that would be a lie.

Sometimes I'm not into being a human.

To a pagan, there is no purpose to suffering. As a result, he lives a life of loneliness and frustration.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

I searched all areas of knowledge, and not only did I fail to find anything, but I was convinced that all those who had explored as I did had also come up with nothing. Not only had they found nothing, but they had clearly acknowledged the same thing that had brought me to despair: the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Everything means nothing that is the only truth.

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.