Hoffer, Eric. Reflections on the Human Condition. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974.

Mass movements use irrationality to shut out the intellect, to turn people into predictable, mindless machines. (12)

To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement. (21)

The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. (22)

The crippled warrior who had to stay behind while the manhood of the tribe went out to war was the first storyteller, teacher, and artisan. The old and the sick had a hand in the development of the arts of healing and of cooking. (25)

The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant. In an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation which an ineffectual self. (30)

Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults. (37)

People who cannot grow want to leap: they want short cuts to fame, fortune, and happiness. (50)

The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance. (52)

The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. (54)

An empty head is not really empty, it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head. (54)

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds. (55)

Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions. (56)

Elitists never tire of repeating that only the chosen few matter; the majority are pigs. Yet it does happen that a he pig marries a she pig and a Leonardo is born. (59)

Both the revolutionary and the creative individuals are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing. (62)

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else – we are the busiest people in the world. (89)

Our greatest weariness comes from work not done. (96)