The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.
ERIC HOFFERWe lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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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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Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
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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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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.
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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds.
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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.
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The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.
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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
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The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
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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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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
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The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.
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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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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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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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One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
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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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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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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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To 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.
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Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.
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We see through others only when we see through ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER