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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
Purpose
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Storyteller
Stories
Basically
Largely
Without
Ideals
Pattern
Men
Meaning
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Life
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Eminently
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
Eric Hoffer
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
Eric Hoffer
Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.
Eric Hoffer
Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Eric Hoffer
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.
Eric Hoffer
Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
Eric Hoffer
Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
Eric Hoffer
First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
Eric Hoffer
You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.
Eric Hoffer
It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
Eric Hoffer
Creativity is discontent translated into arts.
Eric Hoffer
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
Eric Hoffer
It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
Eric Hoffer
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Eric Hoffer
The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.
Eric Hoffer
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Eric Hoffer
Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
Eric Hoffer
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.
Eric Hoffer
There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
Eric Hoffer
Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
Eric Hoffer
