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To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.

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
Insight
Events
Creative
Individual
Experience
Seminal
Insights

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
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There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
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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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To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.
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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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A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.
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The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.
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Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
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Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
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A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.
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However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
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Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
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Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.
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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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The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate.
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The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
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Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
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Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.
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