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If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

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
Large
Europe
Infect
Winning
Communists
Hope
Stir
Part
Discontent
World
Preach
People
Communist
Hatred

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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
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Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.
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A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
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We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true they ruin our dreams.
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It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.
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Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.
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The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
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Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
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Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
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Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.
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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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Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.
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In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.
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Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.
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Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
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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 conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.
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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
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