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Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

Eric Hoffer

The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.
ERIC HOFFER

Country Government High Intellectual Power Production
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
ERIC HOFFER

Choice Goodness Habit Live Possible
The central task of education is to implant a will and 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.
ERIC HOFFER

Age Children Difference Education Human Learning People Togetherness True Willing
Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.
ERIC HOFFER

Enemy Ideal Kind Man Sacrifice
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
ERIC HOFFER

Difference Equality Freedom Passion Reality
We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Deep Ourselves Philosophy Run
Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.
ERIC HOFFER

Build Creation Image Learning Man Nature Perfection Technology
The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
ERIC HOFFER

Future Learning World
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Creation Desire Inspirational Motivational Opportunities Talent Wisdom
The education explosion is producing a vast number of people who want to live significant, important lives but lack the ability to satisfy this craving for importance by individual achievement. The country is being swamped with nobodies who want to be somebodies.
ERIC HOFFER

Ability Achievement Country Education Important Live People Production Satisfaction
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
ERIC HOFFER

Doctor Humanity Room Sick Soul World
Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
ERIC HOFFER

Charm Difference Growth Stupidity
Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
ERIC HOFFER

Death Deep Future Terrorism
When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Boredom Oneself People
Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.
ERIC HOFFER

Energy Existence Hate Human Life Pattern Strong Struggle Survive Weakness Win
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
ERIC HOFFER

Be Yourself Different Improvement Philosophy Transformation Wisdom

Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

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Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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