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For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.

Eric Hoffer

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
ERIC HOFFER

Ideas Leadership Play Quality World
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
Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
ERIC HOFFER

Blame Fair Play Wrong
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
ERIC HOFFER

Mindset Myself Prejudice
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
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
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Life Live Obsession Passionate World
We see through others only when we see through ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Character Philosophy See Wisdom Yourself
You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
ERIC HOFFER

Enough Happiness Need Philosophy Wisdom Yourself
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
Language was invented to ask questions.
ERIC HOFFER

Invention Language Talk
Communists are frustrated capitalists.
ERIC HOFFER

Attitude Character Frustration Identity One Liner
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Best Education Fate Forget Freedom Gift Hands Mad Myself Nation Surrender Willing World
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
ERIC HOFFER

Belief Devil God Rise
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER

Imitation One Liner Rude Strength Weakness
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
ERIC HOFFER

Difficult Empty Force Wisdom

For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.

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For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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