Eric Hoffer Quotes

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

Not only are oppression and exploitation an old story in Asia, but the colonial regimes of the British in lndia and of the Dutch in lndonesia were fairly beneficient—more so perhaps than any regime those countries ever had or are likely to have for some time.

It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals... You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on.

It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.

There is not an idea that cannot be expressed in 200 words. But the writer must know precisely what he wants to say. If you have nothing to say and want badly to say it, then all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.