The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
ERIC HOFFERA 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.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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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.
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It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
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To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
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Anger is a prelude to courage.
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Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.
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We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
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No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.
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The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
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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.
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Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
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Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
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What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds.
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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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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.
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Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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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.
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Learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
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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.
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Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
ERIC HOFFER