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Facts are counterrevolutionary.

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
Rebellious
Literature
Facts

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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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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Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
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Where unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized.
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Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.
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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
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There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.
Eric Hoffer
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Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.
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There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.
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Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.
Eric Hoffer
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The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness and both these ends are reached by imitation.
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The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.
Eric Hoffer
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In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Eric Hoffer