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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.

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
Cult
America
Starts
Good
Rise
Mass
Milieu
Humor
Racket
Movement
Degenerates
Causes
Corporation
Ends

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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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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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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
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In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.
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There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
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Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
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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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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
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Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder.
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Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .
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There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a have type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a have not type of self.
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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.
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It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.
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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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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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Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
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The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness and both these ends are reached by imitation.
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In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them
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