Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.


Eric Hoffer

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Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner
ERIC HOFFER
Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.
ERIC HOFFER
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
ERIC HOFFER
I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON
It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON
Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry a...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimate...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
I kiss the soil as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly moth...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a pro...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, on...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressi...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not d...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law e...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day t...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
The future starts today, not tomorrow.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
The unworthy successor of Peter who desires to benefit from the immeasurable wealth of Christ feels ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and b...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
The United Nations organization has proclaimed 1979 as the Year of the Child. Are the children to re...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, ther...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
I don't know. I can't tell the future I just work there.
STEVEN MOFFAT
The scars of others should teach us caution.
ST. JEROME
They talk like angels but they live like men.
ST. JEROME
Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
MOTHER TERESA
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?
MOTHER TERESA
The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.
MOTHER TERESA
Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe t...
MOTHER TERESA
Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money...
MOTHER TERESA
I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touc...
MOTHER TERESA
Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
MOTHER TERESA
Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.
ST. JEROME
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
MOTHER TERESA
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call...
MOTHER TERESA
True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.
ST. JEROME
Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in t...
ST. JEROME
Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.
ST. JEROME
Virginity can be lost by a thought.
ST. JEROME
Haste is of the Devil.
ST. JEROME
There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only...
MOTHER TERESA
Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.
ST. JEROME
Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive ...
ST. JEROME
Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need...
MOTHER TERESA
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
MOTHER TERESA
Peace begins with a smile.
MOTHER TERESA
The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left...
MOTHER TERESA
If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have t...
MOTHER TERESA
Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
MOTHER TERESA
Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night.
ST. JEROME
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwan...
MOTHER TERESA
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
MOTHER TERESA
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
MOTHER TERESA
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger,...
MOTHER TERESA
A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts.
ST. JEROME
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
MOTHER TERESA
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.
MOTHER TERESA
Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.
MOTHER TERESA
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
MOTHER TERESA
Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.
ST. JEROME
We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.
MOTHER TERESA
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
MOTHER TERESA
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less be...
MOTHER TERESA
Joy is prayer; joy is strength: joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
MOTHER TERESA
I am like the sick sheep that strays from the rest of the flock. Unless the Good Shepherd takes me o...
ST. JEROME
I am that prodigal son who wasted all the portion entrusted to me by my father. But I have not yet f...
ST. JEROME
Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have receiv...
MOTHER TERESA
My native land is a slave of heathenism, men's god is their belly, and they live only for the pr...
ST. JEROME
There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the ...
MOTHER TERESA
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
MOTHER TERESA
Someone may ask, 'How is justice greater than all the other virtues?' The other virtues grat...
ST. JEROME
Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.
ST. JEROME
It is not enough for us to restrain from doing evil, unless we shall also do good.
ST. JEROME
Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not...
SAINT AUGUSTINE
The most High approveth not the gifts of the wicked.
SAINT PATRICK
I see that already in this present world I am exalted above measure by the Lord. And I was not worth...
SAINT PATRICK
He that offereth sacrifice of the goods of the poor is as one that sacrificeth the son in the presen...
SAINT PATRICK
I was freeborn according to the flesh; I am born of a father who was a decurion, but I sold my noble...
SAINT PATRICK
I have had the good fortune through my God that I should never abandon his people whom I have acquir...
SAINT PATRICK
The Lord discovered to me a sense of my unbelief that, though late, I should remember my transgressi...
SAINT PATRICK
Let who will scoff and revile - I will not remain silent; neither will I conceal the signs and wonde...
SAINT PATRICK
I only seek in my old age to perfect that which I had not before thoroughly learned in my youth, bec...
SAINT PATRICK
I have a Creator who knew all things, even before they were made - even me, his poor little child.
SAINT PATRICK
I have vowed to my God to teach the heathen, though I be despised by some.
SAINT PATRICK
No one should ever say that it was my ignorance if I did or showed forth anything however small acco...
SAINT PATRICK
The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart, so that I should recall my sins.
SAINT PATRICK
It was not any grace in me, but God that put this earnest care into my heart, that I should be one o...
SAINT PATRICK
Sufficient for me is that honour which is not seen of men but is felt in the heart, as faithful is H...
SAINT PATRICK
Before I was humiliated I was like a stone that lies in deep mud, and he who is mighty came and in h...
SAINT PATRICK
I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated and least of all the faithful and despised in the eyes of ...
SAINT PATRICK

More Eric Hoffer

Children are the keys of paradise.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and ...
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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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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 le...
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Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us...
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Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
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The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
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We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
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We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
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The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flowby t...
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The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When t...
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How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!
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There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for...
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It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.
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A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a sym...
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There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
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Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in ...
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The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger ...
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It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer f...
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The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to...
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

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Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
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One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of...
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The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in w...
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Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.
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The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their ...
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The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as ...
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Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in l...
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Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for se...
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Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions ...
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The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither ac...
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When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common...
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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring...
ERIC HOFFER
Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. For we can...
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Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would i...
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To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain e...
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Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
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It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposi...
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There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmar...
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The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.
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It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
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It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create someth...
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The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist...
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It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and presen...
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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stu...
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An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anyth...
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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
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No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need p...
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The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of t...
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In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find them...
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It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
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Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
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The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things o...
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The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim a...
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We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
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Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and...
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Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about o...
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The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine h...
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A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
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There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the pre...
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The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword an...
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We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every...
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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-...
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To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
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We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we hav...
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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The well adjusted make poor prophets. A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic...
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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
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The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil ...
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Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
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Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but...
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspi...
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There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his ow...
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Facts are counterrevolutionary.
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It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opini...
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A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.
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Man was nature's mistake --she neglected to finish him -- and she has never ceased paying for her mi...
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in th...
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
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Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, ...
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The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind...
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To the old, the new is usually bad news.
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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
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There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.
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Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the...
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To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as h...
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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 ...
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There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.
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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altoge...
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Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses ...
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We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are ...
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Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-eviden...
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The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the b...
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The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do un...
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Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
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Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like ...
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Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing...
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Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
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What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
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Intolerance is the Do Not Touch sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having o...
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It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is ...
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It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer fr...
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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominate...
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There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a jo...
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It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and ...
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Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the...
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The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious vic...
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Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not or...
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It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigran...
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers...
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The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the ...
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When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.
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The beginning of thought is in disagreement -- not only with others but also with ourselves.
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
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It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission an...
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
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Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of a...
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We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and con...
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A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
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There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being hi...
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All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action...
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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
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Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers a...
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There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
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Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the t...
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Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The ...
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Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossibl...
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The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wis...
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We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: chan...
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When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and th...
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We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the ...
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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions m...
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We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meani...
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The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a ...
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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And w...
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To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of...
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The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
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It is easier to love humanity than to love one's neighbor.
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How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem e...
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Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that ...
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We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire cr...
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Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want ...
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Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to ...
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With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the ...
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A man by himself is in bad company.
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Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the p...
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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
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It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
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We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
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We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many i...
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A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prom...
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The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares no...
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The nature of society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow-by th...
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It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
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There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a...
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Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possib...
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Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling o...
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Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
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People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
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Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of m...
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It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
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In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equippe...
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The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitaria...
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Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength
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The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by d...
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.
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One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of...
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There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were,...
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Our great weariness comes from work not done.
ERIC HOFFER
It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opi...
ERIC HOFFER
There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it
ERIC HOFFER
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
ERIC HOFFER
To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
ERIC HOFFER
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the ...
ERIC HOFFER
The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of thr majority in th...
ERIC HOFFER
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that ...
ERIC HOFFER
You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, ...
ERIC HOFFER
Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And w...
ERIC HOFFER
Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragemen...
ERIC HOFFER
The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in w...
ERIC HOFFER
To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has hap...
ERIC HOFFER
It is easier to love humanity as a whole that to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER
However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we r...
ERIC HOFFER
One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ...
ERIC HOFFER
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
ERIC HOFFER
We feel free when we escape -- even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
ERIC HOFFER