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Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.

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
Burden
Unless
Talent
Liberty
Freedom
Something
Make
Irksome
Men
Talents

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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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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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The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.
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Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
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We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
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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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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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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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To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
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There is no alienation that a little power will not cure.
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Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
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I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.
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The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.
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The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.
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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
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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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Those who feel guilty are afraid and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.
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Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.
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