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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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It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice - that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt - are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.
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Children are the keys of paradise.
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Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.
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Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
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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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There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.
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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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The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
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Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.
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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 superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility.
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Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
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Faith is primarily a process of identification the process by which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal.
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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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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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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 can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
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Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
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