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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.

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
Equilibrium
Upset
Diversity
Justice
Action
Soul
Must
Flailing
Dispose

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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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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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Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
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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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Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience... The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending -- for making a show -- and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.
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There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.
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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.
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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
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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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Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
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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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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.
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We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
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