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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors they can be smelled.

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
Specific
Esteem
Literature
Self
Smelled
Odor
Contempt

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Woe to him inside a non-conformist clique who does not conform to non-conformity.
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However much we guard against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us.
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The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
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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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Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.
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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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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
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Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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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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A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
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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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When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world.
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In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.
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To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
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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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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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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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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 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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