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There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

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
Passionate
Passion
Literature
Away
Pursuer
Earmarks
Fugitive
Shrinking
Passions

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
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The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
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In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.
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When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong it easily becomes a fashion.
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We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
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...the majority of people cannot endure the bareness and futility of their lives unless they have some ardent dedication, or some passionate pursuit in which they can lose themselves.
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Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.
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People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
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It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.
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America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.
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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
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Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.
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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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It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
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Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
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Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
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Woe to him inside a non-conformist clique who does not conform to non-conformity.
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