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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.

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
Free
Feels
Dissenting
Dissent
Impose
Minority
Minorities
Majority
Liberty

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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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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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Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
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Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
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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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Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
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Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
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Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.
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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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It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.
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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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When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die young and playful.
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people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.
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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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The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
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Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.
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