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Eric Hoffer Inspirational Quotes (327)

Page 9 of 14
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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
Eric Hoffer
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Woe to him inside a non-conformist clique who does not conform to non-conformity.
Eric Hoffer
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We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
Eric Hoffer
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We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
Eric Hoffer
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The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
Eric Hoffer
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Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.
Eric Hoffer
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The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
Eric Hoffer
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Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
Eric Hoffer
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The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
Eric Hoffer
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Eric Hoffer
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Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
Eric Hoffer
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To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.
Eric Hoffer
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Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
Eric Hoffer
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It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
Eric Hoffer
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There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.
Eric Hoffer
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Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.
Eric Hoffer
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Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
Eric Hoffer
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Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
Eric Hoffer
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The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.
Eric Hoffer
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Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.
Eric Hoffer
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We can never have enough of that which we really do not want.
Eric Hoffer
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Language was invented to ask questions.
Eric Hoffer
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
Eric Hoffer
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Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
Eric Hoffer
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