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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
Liberty
Small
Passion
Freedom
Minority
Real
Masses
Minorities
Equality
Mass

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There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.
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Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.
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The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.
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Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
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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.
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When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
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The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.
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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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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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When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world.
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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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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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A good sentence is a key . It unlocks the mind of the reader.
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
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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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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were the people, and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.
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