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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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
Vanity
Ignorant
Ignorance
Naivete
Often
Indistinguishable
Coupled
Grownups
Charming
Stupidity
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
A good sentence is a key . It unlocks the mind of the reader.
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A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
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We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.
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Children are the keys of paradise.
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For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future but an excuse can last for life.
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
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We can never have enough of that which we really do not want.
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God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: I am what I am. Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: I am what I am not.
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The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.
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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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Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
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How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
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Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.
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The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else--we are the busiest people in the world.
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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.
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The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.
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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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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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