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.
ERIC HOFFERTo 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.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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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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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
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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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Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
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The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
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Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
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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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Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
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Anger is a prelude to courage.
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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
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Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.
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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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Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.
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An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
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The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
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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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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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Language was invented to ask questions.
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You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
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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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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
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To change everything, simply change your attitude.
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The education explosion is producing a vast number of people who want to live significant, important lives but lack the ability to satisfy this craving for importance by individual achievement. The country is being swamped with nobodies who want to be somebodies.
ERIC HOFFER