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The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

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
Effort
Existence
Totalitarianism
Literature
Bondage
Individual
Individuality
Justify
Efforts
Eternity
Eternal

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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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It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.
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For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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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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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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Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.
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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
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Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.
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Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder.
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The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.
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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 capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.
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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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There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
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We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
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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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Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
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