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Far more critical than what we know or what we don’t know is what we don’t want to know.

Eric Hoffer

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
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
ERIC HOFFER

Chance Failure Person Repeat Success
When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Boredom Oneself People
A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
ERIC HOFFER

Goodness Greatness Luck Man Right Time
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
ERIC HOFFER

Belief Devil God Rise
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 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
Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.
ERIC HOFFER

Easy Inspirational Motivational Work
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
ERIC HOFFER

Attraction Evil Power Promise Weakness
One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
ERIC HOFFER

Freedom Harm Intellectual Privilege Reputation
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Confidence Learning Need Thinking Yourself
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 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 greatest weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER

Greatness Work
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
To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
ERIC HOFFER

Alive Feeling Inspirational Possible

Far more critical than what we know or what we don’t know is what we don’t want to know.

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Far more critical than what we know or what we don’t know is what we don’t want to know.

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