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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

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
Anger is a prelude to courage.
ERIC HOFFER

Angry Courage One Liner
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
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
ERIC HOFFER

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

Choice Goodness Habit Live Possible
Children are the keys of paradise.
ERIC HOFFER

Children Heaven Key One Liner
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 misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.
ERIC HOFFER

Children Man Misery Mom Old Woman Young
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 trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.
ERIC HOFFER

Change Children Education Student Trouble
Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.
ERIC HOFFER

Easy Inspirational Motivational Work
You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
ERIC HOFFER

Enough Happiness Need Philosophy Wisdom Yourself
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER

Easy Friendship Humanity Love
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
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
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 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.

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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.

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