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The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

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
Person
Suspicious
Every
Suspicion
Mind
Believes
Believe
Atheism
Doubt
Ineradicable
Literature
Lurking
Evil
Formidable
Persons
Doubts

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When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world.
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The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility
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Successful action tends to become an end in itself.
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Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were the people, and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.
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An empty head is not really empty it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
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Facts are counterrevolutionary.
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Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
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In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.
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The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth
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The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.
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Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.
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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.
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