Quote

The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.

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
Creative
Inverse
Left
Compulsion
Self
Proportion
Take
Seriously
Flow
Importance
Capacity
Creativity
Dries

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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
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The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.
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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life
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Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
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There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.
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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
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EVERY intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are.
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It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.
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The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
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The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
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A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.
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Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
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Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
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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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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
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For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future but an excuse can last for life.
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people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.
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