Quote

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.

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
Literature
Disinclination
Process
Alibi
Infrequently
Thought
Exaggerating
Think
Exaggerate
Thinking
Exaggeration
Refusal
Praise

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It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
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To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.
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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
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Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
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Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.
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To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
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Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
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However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
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Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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Language was invented to ask questions.
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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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I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
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Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
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No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion it is an evil government.
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Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder.
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