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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

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
Free
Less
Test
Basic
Tests
Perhaps
Freedom

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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors they can be smelled.
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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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Creativity is discontent translated into arts.
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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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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For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.
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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
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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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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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Faith is primarily a process of identification the process by which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal.
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An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.
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The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
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A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.
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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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To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.
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Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
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A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.
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Facts are counterrevolutionary.
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