The 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 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.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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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 -
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
ERIC HOFFER -
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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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.
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Rudeness is the weak man’s limitation of strength.
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An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
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Learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER -
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
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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We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
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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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I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
ERIC HOFFER -
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
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To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
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Language was invented to ask questions.
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I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
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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.
ERIC HOFFER