Eric Hoffer

"No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart."

"The greatest weariness comes from work not done."

"Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."

"If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope."

"We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire."

"It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities."

"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but its own talents."

"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."

"The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness."

"There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other."