Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
ERIC HOFFERFair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
ERIC HOFFERWhere freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
ERIC HOFFERThe 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 HOFFERThe hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
ERIC HOFFERI hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
ERIC HOFFERThe 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 HOFFERFar more critical than what we know or what we don’t know is what we don’t want to know.
ERIC HOFFERThe greatest weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFEROur 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 HOFFERWise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
ERIC HOFFERThe 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 HOFFERThe 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 HOFFERNothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.
ERIC HOFFERA dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
ERIC HOFFERLearners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
ERIC HOFFERLanguage 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