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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

Eric Hoffer

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 hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
ERIC HOFFER

Betrayal Deal Hard Selfish Stupidity
The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
ERIC HOFFER

Blessing Count Hard Mathematics Ourselves
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
ERIC HOFFER

Belief Devil God Rise
The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.
ERIC HOFFER

Creation Creative Dance Ideas Mindset Philosophy Play
When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Boredom Oneself People
The 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 HOFFER

Ability Achievement Country Education Important Live People Production Satisfaction
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
ERIC HOFFER

Corruption Faith Power
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
A 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 HOFFER

Feeling Freedom Opinion Willing
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
ERIC HOFFER

Choice Goodness Habit Live Possible
It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
ERIC HOFFER

Difference Doubt Fight Freedom Oppression Power Pride
Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.
ERIC HOFFER

Build Creation Image Learning Man Nature Perfection Technology
Rudeness is the weak man’s limitation of strength.
ERIC HOFFER

Limitation Man Rude Strength Weakness
One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
ERIC HOFFER

Adult Difference Growth
The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Agreement Beginning Ourselves Thinking

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

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