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 HOFFERThe 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.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
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Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
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What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds.
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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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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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Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.
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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.
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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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 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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We see through others only when we see through ourselves.
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The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
ERIC HOFFER