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A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.

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
Love
Peaceful
Nation
Malcontents
Perhaps
Malcontent
Nations
Dregs
Peace
Orderly
Come
Seed
Without
Pleasant
Things
Seeds

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The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.
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Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .
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Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.
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There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
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The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. 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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It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
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Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
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When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong it easily becomes a fashion.
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Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
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...the majority of people cannot endure the bareness and futility of their lives unless they have some ardent dedication, or some passionate pursuit in which they can lose themselves.
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The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.
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Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
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First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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Those who feel guilty are afraid and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.
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The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
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The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.
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It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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