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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
Importance
Capacity
Creativity
Dries
Creative
Inverse
Left
Compulsion
Self
Proportion
Take
Seriously
Flow
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.
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Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience... The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending -- for making a show -- and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.
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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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There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
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We cannot hate those who we despise.
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To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.
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The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate.
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When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.
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Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
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When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
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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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The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.
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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
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Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.
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Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
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First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
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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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Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
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If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
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