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 HOFFERIt is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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We see through others only when we see through ourselves.
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For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.
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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.
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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
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Rudeness is the weak man’s limitation of strength.
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We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
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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.
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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
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To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
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There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
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Learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
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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.
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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
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The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.
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Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
ERIC HOFFER