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

Eric Hoffer

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

Beginning Confidence Hate Heart Life Lost Way
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

Deep Equality Expose Meaning Ourselves Passion Perspective
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
Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
ERIC HOFFER

Charm Difference Growth Stupidity
The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor’s shortcomings as he is of his own.
ERIC HOFFER

Ability Capacity Ourselves Respect Tolerance
We see through others only when we see through ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Character Philosophy See Wisdom Yourself
To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
ERIC HOFFER

Alive Feeling Inspirational Possible
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
ERIC HOFFER

Chance Failure Person Repeat Success
The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.
ERIC HOFFER

Country Government High Intellectual Power Production
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

Atheist God Image Imitation Invention Man
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
ERIC HOFFER

Atheist Care God Religious
Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
ERIC HOFFER

Death Deep Future Terrorism
The beginning of thought is in disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
ERIC HOFFER

Agreement Beginning Ourselves Thinking
The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
ERIC HOFFER

Future Learning World
Language was invented to ask questions.
ERIC HOFFER

Invention Language Talk
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.
ERIC HOFFER

Doctor Humanity Room Sick Soul World

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

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

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