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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.

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
Pursue
Often
Cannot
Thing
Really
Passionately
Substitute
Substitutes

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The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.
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However much we guard against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of 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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Children are the keys of paradise.
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.
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The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.
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To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.
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The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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We can never have enough of that which we really do not want.
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Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
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There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
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We cannot hate those who we despise.
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A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.
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Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.
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We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
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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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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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