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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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The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
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It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
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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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We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true they ruin our dreams.
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I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
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Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
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We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
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People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
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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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If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
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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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Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
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When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die young and playful.
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The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
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Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
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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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The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.
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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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