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A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

Eric Hoffer

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
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
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
ERIC HOFFER

Choice Goodness Habit Live Possible
Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
ERIC HOFFER

Blame Fair Play Wrong
Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.
ERIC HOFFER

Energy Existence Hate Human Life Pattern Strong Struggle Survive Weakness Win
The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
ERIC HOFFER

Alone Country Easy History People
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
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
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

Achievement Future Greatness Leaving Life People Reason Yourself
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Destruction Leaving Nation Terrorism
The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER

Greatness Work
Rudeness is the weak man’s limitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER

Limitation Man Rude Strength 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
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
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
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
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
ERIC HOFFER

Excitement People Revolution Suffering Taste
Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.
ERIC HOFFER

God Identity Perspective Religious
Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Eyes Fade Hide Imperfection Ourselves Reveal Scars
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
Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.
ERIC HOFFER

Build Creation Image Learning Man Nature Perfection Technology
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
ERIC HOFFER

Reality Understand
A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
ERIC HOFFER

Goodness Greatness Luck Man Right Time
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Lie Loud Ourselves
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
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
Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
ERIC HOFFER

Change Deep Poison Truth Yourself

A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

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A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

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