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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.

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
People
Hearsay
Certitude
Chiefly
Gossip
Thus
Personality
Character

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
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For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future but an excuse can last for life.
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Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.
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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 effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth
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Language was invented to ask questions.
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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 startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
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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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We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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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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When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
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Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.
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It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
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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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Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
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