Eric Hoffer quotes

Eric Hoffer is an American Author (born in 1902). Although I don't agree with most of the themes he's written about, some of his tidbit quotes do display a lot of wisdom. check them out... ;)
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A man by himself is in bad company.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

poodle vs. cheetah

A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her poodle along for company.

One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a hungry-looking leopard heading rapidly in his direction.

The poodle thinks, "Oh, oh!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the leopard is about to leap, the poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?"

Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. "Whew!", says the leopard, "That was close! That poodle nearly had me!"

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, but the poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up. The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard.

The leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back so you can watch me chew that poodle to bits!"

Now, the poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?", but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and waits until they get just close enough to hear.

"Where's that damn monkey?" the poodle says, "I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"