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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
Generalization
Potent
Prone
Contagious
Assume
Assuming
Good
Generalize

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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
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It is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
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Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
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The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.
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It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
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To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.
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There is no alienation that a little power will not cure.
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Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
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Creativity is discontent translated into arts.
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Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out.
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Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.
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We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
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Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
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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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The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.
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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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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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