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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
Struggle
Purposeful
Food
Futility
Poor
Starvation
Free
Wholly
Lives
Shelter
Sense
Desperate
Live
Engaged
Poverty
Borderline

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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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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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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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There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
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Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.
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The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
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Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them
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It is not at all simple to understand the simple.
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Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
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One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
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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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There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
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To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
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