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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
Forms
Failure
Expression
Land
Pioneering
Literature
Pioneer
Often
Undertakings
Form
Pioneers
Lands
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.
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A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
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The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors they can be smelled.
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It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power - power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors they want to retaliate.
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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.
Eric Hoffer
The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
Eric Hoffer
However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
Eric Hoffer
Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
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Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.
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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
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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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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
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The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
Eric Hoffer
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.
Eric Hoffer
First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
Eric Hoffer
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Eric Hoffer
The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
Eric Hoffer
