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A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

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
Seeing
Future
Often
Rearrange
Past
Prompts
Preoccupation
Prevents
Adversity
Present

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In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.
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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
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There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.
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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors they can be smelled.
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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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The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.
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Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.
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Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.
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We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
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In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.
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Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.
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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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Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
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