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

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When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die young and playful.
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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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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
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Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
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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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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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The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.
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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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It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.
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We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
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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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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
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Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
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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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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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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
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Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.
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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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