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We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

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
Literature
Knowledge
Things
Vehement
Concerning
Precise
Diversity
Least
Open

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Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
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It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.
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people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.
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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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Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.
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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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Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
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This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter
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An empty head is not really empty it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
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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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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
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Language was invented to ask questions.
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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 is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.
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It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
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The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.
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Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.
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