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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer 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
Thing
Deceitfulness
Cope
Sheer
Selfishness
Stupidity
Vanity
Hardest

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Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.
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A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
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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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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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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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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
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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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How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
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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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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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The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.
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To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.
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We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
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Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
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In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.
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The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
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