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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

Eric Hoffer

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Deep Faith Lost Wisdom
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
The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
ERIC HOFFER

Betrayal Deal Hard Selfish Stupidity
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
ERIC HOFFER

Choice Goodness Habit Live Possible
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
ERIC HOFFER

Cure Privacy Sick Trouble
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
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
ERIC HOFFER

Attitude Character Food Hands People
When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Boredom Oneself People
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 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.
ERIC HOFFER

Deep Equality Expose Meaning Ourselves Passion Perspective
It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
ERIC HOFFER

Compassionate Justice Man Principle Protection
The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor’s shortcomings as he is of his own.
ERIC HOFFER

Ability Capacity Ourselves Respect Tolerance
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
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
ERIC HOFFER

Build Empty Evil Greatness Hard Hide Ourselves Philosophy Pretend Ugly
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Business Character Man Mindset People Worth
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
ERIC HOFFER

Deep Future Power Way

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

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Popular Authors

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