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To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.

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
Without
Belonging
Matter
Utterly
Men
Despair
Life
Matters
Eternity
Clings
Mere
Shameless
Sense
Alienation
Reality
Nothingness

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Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
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The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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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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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
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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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When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
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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.
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One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
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Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.
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Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
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Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
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Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
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Those who feel guilty are afraid and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
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Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
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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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