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In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.

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
Hope
Hustle
Live
Breath
Without
Breaths
People
Kept
Balance
Modern
Hustling
Society
Dazed
Faith
Incessant

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There is no alienation that a little power will not cure.
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The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
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A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
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Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.
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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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Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
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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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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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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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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 fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
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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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Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.
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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
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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.
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Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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