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The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.

Eric Hoffer

The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.
ERIC HOFFER

Creation Creative Dance Ideas Mindset Philosophy Play
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
ERIC HOFFER

Cure Privacy Sick Trouble
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

Ability Achievement Country Education Important Live People Production Satisfaction
Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
ERIC HOFFER

Country Education Nation Present
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question.
ERIC HOFFER

Action Age Human Invention Language Man Talk
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
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
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
Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
ERIC HOFFER

Cheating Feeling Himself Missing Right Thinking Trust Wonderful World
Take man’s most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.
ERIC HOFFER

Atheist God Image Imitation Invention Man
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
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
There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
ERIC HOFFER

Doubt Humility Life Practice Selfish Worth
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds.
ERIC HOFFER

Appearance Face Mindset People Walk
The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER

Greatness Work
When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Boredom Oneself People

The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.

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The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.

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Popular Authors

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