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We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
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
Contagious
Assume
Assuming
Good
Generalize
Generalization
Potent
Prone
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
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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Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.
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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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To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.
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Woe to him inside a non-conformist clique who does not conform to non-conformity.
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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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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.
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The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.
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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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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.
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Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.
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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
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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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When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
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