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It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

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
Lands
Forms
Failure
Expression
Land
Pioneering
Literature
Pioneer
Often
Undertakings
Form
Pioneers

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The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. 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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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.
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If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
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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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It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.
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We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
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What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.
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Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
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The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.
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It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.
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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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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
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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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Intolerance is the ''Do Not Touch'' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness.
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It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
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It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.
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