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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

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
People
Bores
Primarily
Boredom
Bored

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The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
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A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.
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It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
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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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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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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 short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
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The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.
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The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
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There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
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The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
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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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There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
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There is a time when the word eventually has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.
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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
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