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There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.

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
House
Loneliness
Stranger
Failure
Greater

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The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.
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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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There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
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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 learn.
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
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There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.
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You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.
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God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: I am what I am. Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: I am what I am not.
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The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.
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To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion it is an evil government.
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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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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In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them
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Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience... The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending -- for making a show -- and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.
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They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.
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Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
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The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate.
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The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power.
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