No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.
ERIC HOFFERNature 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.
More Eric Hoffer Quotes
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To change everything, simply change your attitude.
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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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Language was invented to ask questions.
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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 basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
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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.
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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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The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
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The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
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The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
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The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
ERIC HOFFER