To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
ERIC HOFFERWise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
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One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
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Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.
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Far more critical than what we know or what we don’t know is what we don’t want to know.
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One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
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Take man’s most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.
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There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
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The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
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A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.
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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 compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
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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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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 can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
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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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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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Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
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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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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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Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
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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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Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
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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