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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.

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
Equality
Mass
Liberty
Small
Passion
Freedom
Minority
Real
Masses
Minorities

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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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The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.
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It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.
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We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
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To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
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Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
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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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The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause. God wishes, said Calvin, that one should put aside all humanity when it is a question of striving for His glory.
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The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
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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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The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
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A good sentence is a key . It unlocks the mind of the reader.
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America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.
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To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.
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Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .
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A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
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A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
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