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The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.

Eric Hoffer

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

Excitement People Revolution Suffering Taste
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
Far more critical than what we know or what we don’t know is what we don’t want to know.
ERIC HOFFER

Philosophy Yourself
Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
ERIC HOFFER

End Goodness Military Rise
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
ERIC HOFFER

Difference Equality Freedom Passion Reality
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

Life Live Obsession Passionate World
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Deep Faith Lost Wisdom
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
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
ERIC HOFFER

Be Yourself Different Improvement Philosophy Transformation Wisdom
The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER

Greatness Work
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
The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
ERIC HOFFER

Future Learning World
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
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER

Imitation One Liner Rude Strength Weakness
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
ERIC HOFFER

Choice Deep Freedom Philosophy
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

The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.

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The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.

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