Quote

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

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
Fears
Propagandist
Coaches
Stirs
Vanity
Appetites
Fear
Skillful
Real
Persuasion
Internals
Internal
Appetite

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It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
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Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.
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Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
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Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
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A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
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The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.
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Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
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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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Children are the keys of paradise.
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