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It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

Eric Hoffer

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
ERIC HOFFER

Discover Enemy Fear Scare Yourself
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
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
ERIC HOFFER

Freedom Imitation People
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Frustration Greatness Oneself Philosophy Satisfaction Wisdom
Far more critical than what we know or what we don’t know is what we don’t want to know.
ERIC HOFFER

Philosophy Yourself
The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.
ERIC HOFFER

Creation Creative Dance Ideas Mindset Philosophy Play
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
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Doubt Humility Life Practice Selfish Worth
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
ERIC HOFFER

Reality Understand
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.
ERIC HOFFER

End Goodness Military Rise
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
ERIC HOFFER

Attraction Evil Power Promise Weakness
Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
ERIC HOFFER

Beginning Confidence Hate Heart Life Lost Way
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER

Easy Friendship Humanity Love
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Feeling Freedom Opinion 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
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
ERIC HOFFER

Choice Deep Freedom Philosophy

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

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It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

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Popular Authors

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