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Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.

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
Humans
Stay
Men
Environment
Life
Goal
Encroachment
Nature
Achievements
Become
Chief
Stills
Chiefs
Still
Defend
Human
Achievement

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Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
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Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
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The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
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Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.
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I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
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The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.
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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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However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
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Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.
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Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
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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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A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
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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 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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They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.
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Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
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