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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
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Eric Hoffer
Age: 84 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 25
Died: 1983
Died: May 21
Philosopher
Psychologist
Writer
New York City
New York
Thing
Math
Something
Hardest
Ugly
Built
Pretenses
Trust
Pretension
Greatest
Pretense
Beauty
Emptiness
Evil
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More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.
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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
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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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There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
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It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.
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Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.
Eric Hoffer
A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
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Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
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In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
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That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.
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A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
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A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.
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Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.
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My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
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There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.
Eric Hoffer
Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
Eric Hoffer
