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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.

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
Left
Young
Children
Malady
Time
Busy
Teaching
Teacher
Age
Learn

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Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
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To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.
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It is not at all simple to understand the simple.
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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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If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.
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The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
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The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
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The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.
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In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.
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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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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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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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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
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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 man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
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To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews , and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.
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Whenever we proclaim the uniqueness of a religion , a truth , a leader, a nation, a race, a part or a holy cause, we are also proclaiming our own uniqueness.
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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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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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