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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

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
Promise
Literature
Evil
Often
Sense
Power
Glitter
Attracts
Weak

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Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
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In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.
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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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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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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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Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.
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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
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A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
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For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.
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A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
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A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.
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Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.
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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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