The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.
Eric Ries
Related The most successful men work smart, not hard BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all... PELE I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Jujitsu is blood, sweat and tears. It takes hard work, perseverance and tenacity to be successful. JOSE ORTIZ [Classically,] true psychopaths were not successful. For the most part, they were major screw-ups. CHRIS PATRICK The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed, most successful men fail time and time agai... MICHAEL KORDA Most start-up companies fail and it is smart public policy to help entrepreneurs increase their odds... ERIC RIES Grit is that 'extra something' that separates the most successful people from the rest. It... TRAVIS BRADBERRY Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. LEONARDO DAVINCI Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. LEONARDO DA VINCI … there is something very strange and childish in the way grown-ups feel about their clocks—in t... GüNTER GRASS The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time t... MICHAEL KORDA The world's most successful entrepreneurs play hard, but they work even harder. BEN PARR Men the most infamous are fond of fame,
And those who fear not guilt, yet start at shame. CHARLES CHURCHILL Human beings are complicated, yet from our experience of working with hundreds of thousands of peopl... ROBERT WHITE Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw... JUDITH LEWIS HERMAN Teenagers are some of the most passionate, dynamic and creative people I know. Yet, too often, this ... MALORIE BLACKMAN In reality, American girls are among the most outspoken, ambitious, successful girls in the history ... CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS Most of the time you will fail, but you will also occasionally succeed. Those occasional successes m... DEAN KAMEN Most brands want to see their products used in creative ways. BRIT MORIN Don't worry about genius. Don't worry about being clever. Trust to hard work, perseverance and deter... SIR THOMAS TREVES Luck is a component that a lot of people in the arts sometimes fail to recognise: that you can have ... BRYAN CRANSTON Work is the most important tool for conversion of time into valuable products and services SUNDAY ADELAJA The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most importa... YEVGENY ZAMYATIN Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of the hard work you already did. NEWT GINGRICH Successful start-ups have one really differentiating quality — the art of trying harder. DAN WALDSCHMIDT I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the stor... BEVERLY CLEARY I think one of the most important attributes is perseverance. DAVID ROSE I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story th... BEVERLY CLEARY The three indispensable of genius are: understanding, feeling, and perseverance; the three things th... ROBERT SOUTHEY Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. NEWT GINGRICH The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. ... EUGENE H. PETERSON Our research shows that most drivers of new large pick-ups use them for commuting and personal trips... ERIC HAXTHAUSEN Even in this world of course it is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest gr... C.S. LEWIS The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply... CHERYL STRAYED Failure does not count. If you accept this, you'll be successful. What causes most people to fail is... FRANK BURFORD Starting a company and being a founder is really hard, and most companies fail. You really have to h... AILEEN LEE There are three most important things to get success in life. The first is to work hard. The second ... VIKRANT PARSAI Feast of Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387 What art Thou then, my God? What, but the Lor... ST. AUGUSTINE When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in t... THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; a... JAMES BALDWIN I don't know if I have met a true genius. I do know that if I have met a genius, that they were neve... RALPH DOWNEY III Genius is divine perseverance. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness but perseverance all ... WOODROW T. WILSON We are doing the most important possible work in the world when we open the door and reveal our crea... JACOB NORDBY A lot of people fail because they come into it thinking they're going to make unbelievable amounts o... MARC FRIEDFERTIG There is a saying: Genius is perseverance. While genius does not consist entirely of editing, withou... SUSAN BELL Most of us experience happiness when we are enjoying life and feeling free, enjoying the process and... JAMES MURIEL Luck is great, but most of life is hard work. IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the... MICHAEL ERIC DYSON The only genius that's worth anything is the genius for hard work. KATHLEEN WINSOR Hard work is the secret of being a genius. SUNDAY ADELAJA What is the Other?" they ask. The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not ... PAULO COELHO Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourag... GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER I don't believe people die from hard work. They die from stress and worry and fear -- the negative e... A.L. WILLIAMS Performing is the most important single action in my life. It is a unique experience of hard work-el... ADAM ANT The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world, and the most dangerous. JAMES CLAVELL The most successful are not the most perfect, but the imperfect who dare to believe that they can de... BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from non-successful one... STEVE JOBS . One with persistence attitude is stubborn & optimistic. Persistence reflects one’s determination... DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders. G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders. GEORG C. LICHTENBERG Without question, the single most important attribute of a successful entrepreneur is integrity. And... DAVID S. ROSE The products that are moving out of the stores the fastest are those that are most expensive. GIORGIO ARMANI The reality of most software development is that the consequences of failure are simply nonexistent. DAN KAMINSKY People fail because they are trying hard to change the picture inside the mirror not what inside the... MINA TADROS Our engineers are using the most creative technology in the industry to develop this new generation ... LARRY MASON All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and
childlike--and yet it is the most preci... SIR HUMPHREY DAVY All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike-and yet it is the most preciou... ALBERT EINSTEIN The long and the short of the story is that we must cut back on our expenses and the most important ... HENK MUDGE From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new p... RICHARD P. FEYNMAN Most of the guys recognize this is like staring a new business ? we need time. And, it's not a great... BILL THRELKELD Given the freedom to create, everybody is creative. All of us have an innate, instinctive desire to ... WILLIAM SHATNER Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new ... HENRY WARD BEECHER I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful... STEVE JOBS Do not work hard, get creative & work smart! PETE TKACHEV It has been said that a man of genius should select his ancestors with great care - and yet there do... ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL We reserve the term 'genius' for people who are creative, who are innovators, who think in w... JOSHUA FOER Fail hard, fail fast and fail often is the only way to get involved with real innovation in this fas... DANNY MEKIć The most successful people I know are also the most reliable. WAYNE GERARD TROTMAN The most essential in achieving a set goal is perseverance, steadfastness and persistence SUNDAY ADELAJA I am very proud of my mom and consider her the most courageous woman I know. With perseverance, sacr... DIANA LOPEZ The industry has to learn how to do CEO succession well. If your definition of success is Intel or M... JOHN T. CHAMBERS If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened bef... JOHANN MOST The existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its expone... JOHANN MOST If we hope and even assume that the social question will be answered through communism, and not in t... JOHANN MOST Fortunately, no country was ever more suited for anarchist agitation than present-day America. JOHANN MOST Anarchists are socialists because they want the improvement of society, and they are communists beca... JOHANN MOST Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost. JOHANN MOST Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself... JOHANN MOST I was really more interested in dramatic work, but I thought, 'Well, I guess I could do comedy.&... DONNY MOST It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell - '... JOHANN MOST It should be noted that these patients were all quite motivated to try this product. Facial plastic ... SAM MOST As set forth by theologians, the idea of "God" is an argument that assumes its own conclusions, and ... JOHANN MOST The more man clings to religion, the more he believes. The more he believes, the less he knows. The ... JOHANN MOST 'God' - as revealed in his book of edicts and narratives is practically an idiot. He has nothing to ... JOHANN MOST It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell - 'volu... JOHANN MOST The god of the Christians, as we have seen, is the god who makes promises only to break them; who se... JOHANN MOST A god who created man "after his own image", and still the origin of evil in man is not accredited t... JOHANN MOST Among all mental diseases that have been systematically inoculated into the human cranium, the relig... JOHANN MOST He who negates present society, and seeks social conditions based on the sharing of property, is a r... JOHANN MOST
More Eric Ries
If your goal is to make money, becoming an entrepreneur is a sucker's bet. Sure, some entreprene... ERIC RIES There is no greater country on Earth for entrepreneurship than America. In every category, from the ... ERIC RIES Entrepreneurs can't forecast accurately, because they are trying something fundamentally new. So... ERIC RIES When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created Apple computer in a garage in Palo Alto, it heralded the b... ERIC RIES Famous pivot stories are often failures but you don't need to fail before you pivot. All a pivot... ERIC RIES In my first start-up, I had an initial advertising budget of $5 per day total. That would buy us 100... ERIC RIES I bet the people who are in the auto industry right now have more than 10,000 good ideas about what ... ERIC RIES There was a study done in the early 20th century of all the entrepreneurs who entered the automobile... ERIC RIES The United States is locked in a new arms race for that most precious resource - the future entrepre... ERIC RIES I asked all of our recruiters to give me all resumes of prospective employees with their name, gende... ERIC RIES There's nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are abl... ERIC RIES It was 1999, and we were building a way for college kids to create online profiles for the purpose o... ERIC RIES The mistake isn't releasing something bad. The mistake is to launch it and get PR people involve... ERIC RIES The biggest start-up successes - from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - were pioneered b... ERIC RIES Entrepreneurship is not really building a product, it's not having an idea, it's not being i... ERIC RIES You get a culture of entrepreneurship after you have successfully changed the accountability system ... ERIC RIES Start-up success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. S... ERIC RIES As an entrepreneur, I knew that if my company failed, I could always try again. So I often felt that... ERIC RIES I would say, as an entrepreneur everything you do - every action you take in product development, in... ERIC RIES The attributes for entrepreneurs cut both ways. You need the ability to ignore inconvenient facts an... ERIC RIES When it comes to meritocracy and diversity, the symbolic is real. And that means that simple actions... ERIC RIES The problem with entrepreneurship is we are often working really hard producing high quality product... ERIC RIES I actually believed if you work hard enough it was inevitable you'd succeed. Then I lived the ... ERIC RIES People are accustomed to thinking of accounting as dry and boring, a necessary evil used primarily t... ERIC RIES Building the right product requires systematically and relentlessly testing that vision to discover ... ERIC RIES I believe for the first time in history, entrepreneurship is now a viable career. ERIC RIES You know how people always talk about how vision is the key to entrepreneurship and perseverance and... ERIC RIES Learning to see waste and systematically eliminate it has allowed lean companies such as Toyota to d... ERIC RIES The reality is the Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Lean startups waste les... ERIC RIES Most start-up companies fail and it is smart public policy to help entrepreneurs increase their odds... ERIC RIES Most entrepreneurs don't need as many customers as they think. A lot of people think 10 is too f... ERIC RIES We have some great senior leadership and real exciting newcomers. We look to be pretty strong in som... ERIC RIES It's a really paradoxical thing. We want to think big, but start small. And then scale fast. Peo... ERIC RIES We need to reengineer companies to focus on figuring out who the customer is, what's the market ... ERIC RIES Most phenomenal startup teams create businesses that ultimately fail. Why? They built something that... ERIC RIES She is the Donald Trump of the younger generation, AL RIES Strategy should evolve out of the mud of the marketplace, not in the antiseptic environment of an iv... AL RIES Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills. AL RIES It's the first company to build the mental position that has the upper hand, not the first company t... AL RIES Today, communication itself is the problem. We have become the world's first overcommunicated soci... AL RIES Don't overlook the importance of worldwide thinking. A company that keeps its eye on Tom, Dick and ... AL RIES He said, 'Yeah, let's do it,' ... Then he said, 'You should ask Keith [Richards].' I didn't want to ... TIM RIES They already, in a sense, lease space on their home page to others, such as Drugstore.com and Pets.c... DAN RIES With the Stones, it's not like you're a side saxophone player, TIM RIES Големите компании виждат нещата такива, кавито са. Пре�... AL RIES They've got to show the Street and they've got to do it themselves, to get the stock going again, th... DAN RIES They really layered in a whole lot more infrastructure, so now they have to be even larger to break ... DAN RIES You really need someone who's got a feel for the great Australian middle class and what they want to... IVOR RIES You constantly hear about voter fraud... but you don't see huge amounts of vote fraud out there. ERIC HOLDER We must never stop fighting for a vision of American democracy in which we strive for and encourage ... ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN Children are the keys of paradise. ERIC HOFFER It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. ERIC HOFFER Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature. ERIC HOFFER Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and ... ERIC HOFFER The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future. ERIC HOFFER It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to le... ERIC HOFFER Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us... ERIC HOFFER Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength. ERIC HOFFER The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves. ERIC HOFFER We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire. ERIC HOFFER We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about. ERIC HOFFER One of the things I learned is that you've got to deal with the underlying social problems if yo... ERIC HOLDER I've been hearing this since I first joined the Reds organization, that I'm going to be the ... ERIC DAVIS I can understand why a single parent, working two jobs, would find it easier to stop at McDonald'... ERIC SCHLOSSER Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achie... ERIC BUTTERWORTH Consultant: any ordinary guy more than fifty miles from home. ERIC SEVAREID If you sequence a cancerous tumor, you should be able to tailor the therapy according to the root ca... ERIC TOPOL A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of anxiety, but a Kokoschka painting, or a Schiele self-por... ERIC KANDEL I want to be remembered for my poop jokes. Those are the most important kind. ERIC ANDRE A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses, but talks about what he'll do if he wins... ERIC BERNE Google was founded to get information to everybody. A by-product of that strategy is that we invente... ERIC SCHMIDT When someone makes a claim against the state, that person must legally verify that the facts in the ... ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have ... ERIC HOLDER Television is a lot of fun. It's faster-paced. The schedule is really desirable, I guess. But as... ERIC DANE It takes a lot of energy to be negative. You have to work at it. But smiling is painless. I'd ra... ERIC DAVIS I like Velvet Underground, but I was never really hardcore into them. I like them, and I like Nico, ... ERIC ANDRE If someone is too perfect they won't look good. Imperfection is important. ERIC CANTONA I love cheese and biscuits, the stronger the better. ERIC BRISTOW Why should citizenship be a matter of birth? The premise held by those who want to end birthright ci... ERIC LIU I am a Buddhist, therefore I should not be collecting anything - however, I have a collection of Bud... ERIC RIPERT First paying gig, I got 20 bucks. I played at some really weird venue. I don't remember the venu... ERIC ANDRE Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it... ERIC BROWN When Bryan Price taught me how to throw a changeup, he made me see myself. All my life, I've bee... ERIC LIU I have two bowls of confidence for breakfast each morning. ERIC BRISTOW If you are going to make a change, make it big and bold. Walk up to the biggest guy on the block, st... ERIC SHINSEKI With breathtaking rapidity, we are destroying all that was lovely to look at and turning America int... ERIC SEVAREID You know, you grow up with the image of John Travolta being super cool - 'Saturday Night Fever,&... ERIC STOLTZ The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flowby t... ERIC HOFFER The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When t... ERIC HOFFER How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization! ERIC HOFFER There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for... ERIC HOFFER It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs. ERIC HOFFER I have a Tinder account. Now I've done Bumble, and I've tried this other one, and the way I ... ERIC STONESTREET At Tenafly High, I was lucky to have some dedicated teachers; I'm especially indebted to my calc... ERIC MASKIN All I ever wanted to do was get a great job on a TV show. When I read 'Modern Family' and st... ERIC STONESTREET My wife is a real camper; it's a nice way to bond. ERIC MCCORMACK Great businessmen are creators. ERIC CANTONA I'll tell you one thing about me: I'm very private. I always have been private. People think... ERIC DICKERSON Within that dream of working with your partner, you want to be able to separate and have a home life... ERIC WINTER If what I've been told is true - and I believe it is, General David Petraeus, a commander with s... ERIC MASSA There are certain mutations you can find across cancers in different organs. ERIC TOPOL There are estimates that 2 to 3 percent of cancers in the U.S. each year are engendered by exposure ... ERIC TOPOL As with almost every significant aspect of the Bush presidency, its handling of 9/11 was a catastrop... ERIC ALTERMAN I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist. ERIC CLAPTON With vocal and choral music, first and foremost, it's the text. Not only do I need to serve the ... ERIC WHITACRE There's a roots nature to Appalachia - the origins of folk and bluegrass. I know guys there who ... ERIC CHURCH A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a sym... ERIC HOFFER There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other. ERIC HOFFER Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in ... ERIC HOFFER The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger ... ERIC HOFFER Sharks have been swimming the oceans unchallenged for thousands of years; chances are, the species t... ERIC GELMAN Lightning is the shorthand of a storm, and tells of chaos. ERIC MACKAY The Boomers will eventually have to accept that it is not possible to stay forever young or to stop ... ERIC LIU When a bank calls in a loan, it obviously hurts the customer in question. But it also adversely affe... ERIC MASKIN It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer f... ERIC HOFFER Mass is resistance to motion. ERIC PARSLOW One of the keys to wealth is to understand why & how the distance from 1 to 1 million is greater tha... ERIC PARSLOW The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself. ERIC HOFFER Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to... ERIC HOFFER Whether it is an attempt to bomb the New York City subway system, an attempt to bring down an airpla... ERIC HOLDER 'The Simpsons' is like Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando or Richard Pryor: Comedy couldn't... ERIC ANDRE The greatest weariness comes from work not done. ERIC HOFFER Anything and everything, physical or otherwise, is defined by its absence. ERIC PARSLOW Life is the dynamic, creative edge of reality. ERIC PARSLOW Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer. ERIC HOFFER The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they follow. Bigness means weakness. ERIC SEVAREID The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness. ERIC SEVAREID One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of... ERIC HOFFER The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in w... ERIC HOFFER Remembering is something God asks us to do over �... ERIC IRIVUZUMUGABE Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow. ERIC HOFFER The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their ... ERIC HOFFER The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as ... ERIC HOFFER Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in l... ERIC HOFFER Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for se... ERIC HOFFER Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves. ERIC HOFFER Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions ... ERIC HOFFER The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither ac... ERIC HOFFER As I railed on and on, I became increasingly energied and excited by my own misery and misanthropy u... ERIC WEINER For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman ... ERIC AMBLER Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo... ERIC WEINER It's my duty as a human being to be pissed off ERIC BOGOSIAN I know what I want to hear. I want to hear the "Believe it or Not" song. I want to play that shit lo... ERIC SPITZNAGEL The chief cause of problems is solutions. ERIC SEVAREID When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common... ERIC HOFFER Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring... ERIC HOFFER Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. For we can... ERIC HOFFER Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would i... ERIC HOFFER To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain e... ERIC HOFFER For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be.... ERIC ROTH The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer se... ERIC BERNE It is a well known fact that Abraham Lincoln spent much of his spare time visiting wounded soldiers ... ERIC FONER Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn'... ERIC IDLE Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect. ERIC HOFFER It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposi... ERIC HOFFER There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmar... ERIC HOFFER The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind. ERIC HOFFER It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents. ERIC HOFFER It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities. ERIC HOFFER It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. ERIC HOFFER Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create someth... ERIC HOFFER Lightning is the shorthand of a storm, and tells of chaos. ERIC MACKAY The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist... ERIC HOFFER It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and presen... ERIC HOFFER Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stu... ERIC HOFFER An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anyth... ERIC HOFFER Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled. ERIC HOFFER No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need p... ERIC HOFFER One of the best things to do sometimes is simply to be. ERIC BUTTERWORTH The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of t... ERIC HOFFER In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find them... ERIC HOFFER I loved learning, it was school I hated. I used to cut school to go learn something. ERIC JENSEN It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence. ERIC HOFFER Animals often strike us as passionate machines. ERIC HOFFER The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things o... ERIC HOFFER The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim a... ERIC HOFFER We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams. ERIC HOFFER You've got to create a dream. You've got to uphold the dream. If you can't, go back to the factory o... ERIC BURDON If you think you can do it, you can. ERIC LINDROS Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and... ERIC HOFFER Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about o... ERIC HOFFER The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine h... ERIC HOFFER Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change. GOLNIK ERIC We don't change what we are, we change what we think what we are. ERIC BUTTERWORTH A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed. ERIC HOFFER There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the pre... ERIC HOFFER The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword an... ERIC HOFFER We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every... ERIC HOFFER Competing with an other is exhilarating, challenging, and healthy. That is what Games are for. When... ERIC PARSLOW A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-... ERIC HOFFER Absence of communication between necessarily linked parties ensures eventual conflict. ERIC PARSLOW The notion of implied meaning is the root of misunderstanding. ERIC PARSLOW To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question. ERIC HOFFER We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we hav... ERIC HOFFER To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. ERIC HOFFER The well adjusted make poor prophets. A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic... ERIC HOFFER Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word. ERIC GILL Prosperity is not just having things. It is the consciousness that attracts the things. Prosperity i... ERIC BUTTERWORTH Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible. ERIC HOFFER The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil ... ERIC HOFFER