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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

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 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
Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.
ERIC HOFFER

God Identity Perspective Religious
Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.
ERIC HOFFER

Adult Listening Serious Young
A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
ERIC HOFFER

Goodness Greatness Luck Man Right Time
To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
ERIC HOFFER

Brand Faith Listening Need Person Professional Religion Tolerance
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
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Angel Hate Human Man Nature Savior
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
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
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
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
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
To change everything, simply change your attitude.
ERIC HOFFER

Attitude Change Simplicity Yourself
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
ERIC HOFFER

Attitude Character Food Hands People
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
ERIC HOFFER

Deep Happiness Search Wisdom

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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Popular Authors

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