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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.

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
Causes
Unlimited
Purpose
Opportunities
Opportunity
Content
Purposelessness
Lives
Offers
Dedicating
Also
Mass
Fanatical
Find
Holy
Grievance
Trying
Cause
Haunted
People
Movement
Nursing

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A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
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We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
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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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It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
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I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
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There is no alienation that a little power will not cure.
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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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The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.
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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
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Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.
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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
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In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.
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In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.
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Whenever we proclaim the uniqueness of a religion , a truth , a leader, a nation, a race, a part or a holy cause, we are also proclaiming our own uniqueness.
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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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An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.
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The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate.
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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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They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.
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