For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.
ERIC HOFFERMass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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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.
ERIC HOFFER -
Learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER -
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
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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 greatest weariness comes from work not done.
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There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
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Anger is a prelude to courage.
ERIC HOFFER -
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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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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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.
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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Communists are frustrated capitalists.
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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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Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
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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.
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER -
The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
ERIC HOFFER -
Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
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The 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 HOFFER -
The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
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Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
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Take man’s most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.
ERIC HOFFER -
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
ERIC HOFFER