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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.

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
Revolutionary
Genuine
Products
Artist
Distills
Art
Diametrically
Persons
Dissatisfied
Person
Dissatisfaction
Much
Opposed

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The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.
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Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
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Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
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We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
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Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.
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I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.
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Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.
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Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
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To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
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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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We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
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This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter
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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
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