Quote

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.

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
Giving
Meaning
Needs
Existence
Much
Suffering
Something
Purpose
Life
Also
Give
Live
Need
Suffer

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility
Eric Hoffer
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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
Eric Hoffer
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Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
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Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
Eric Hoffer
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Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.
Eric Hoffer
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
Eric Hoffer
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Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
Eric Hoffer
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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
Eric Hoffer
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The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
Eric Hoffer
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No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
Eric Hoffer
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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
Eric Hoffer
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Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.
Eric Hoffer