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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

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Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.
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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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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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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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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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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
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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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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
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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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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 is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
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Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
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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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One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
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It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
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Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
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Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
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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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