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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

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
Rarely
Experience
Without
Even
Things
Foreboding
Stirring
Slight

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.
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The superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility.
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Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
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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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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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The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
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The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.
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Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.
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Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
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The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.
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Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
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The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth
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It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.
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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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The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
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Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
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The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.
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The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.
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America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.
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No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments.
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