Quote

Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.

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
Men
Meaning
Mission
Life
Development
Plot
Like
Cause
Missions
Causes
Ideal
Story
Search
Eminently
Purpose
Patterns
Storyteller
Stories
Basically
Largely
Without
Ideals
Pattern

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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.
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Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
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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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Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
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Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
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There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
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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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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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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
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A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
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The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
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The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.
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The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
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The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.
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Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were the people, and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.
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There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
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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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