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The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility
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
Free
Wholly
Lives
Shelter
Sense
Desperate
Live
Engaged
Poverty
Borderline
Struggle
Purposeful
Food
Futility
Poor
Starvation
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors they can be smelled.
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Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
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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.
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Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out.
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One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
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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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There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
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When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
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There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
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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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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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A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
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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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Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
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We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
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Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.
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Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
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The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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