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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

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
Weakness
Power
Many
Work
Rudeness
Corrupts

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People haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
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What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.
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Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
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Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
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When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.
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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
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The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power.
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We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
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A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.
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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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People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
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A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
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To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.
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What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored.
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Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
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The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
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