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 HOFFERTo know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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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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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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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
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Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
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The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.
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The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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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.
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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.
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
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It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
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Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.
ERIC HOFFER