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 HOFFERTo learn you need a certain degree of confidence, not too much and not too little. If you have too little confidence, you will think you can’t learn. If you have too much, you will think you don’t have to learn.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
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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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I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.
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To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
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Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
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Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
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Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
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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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Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.
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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question.
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one’s own life.
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Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.
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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.
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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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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
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No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.
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We see through others only when we see through ourselves.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.
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Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
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It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
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Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
ERIC HOFFER