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Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

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
Children
Believers
Savages
Believer
Seen
Heard
Less
True
Remember

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Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.
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Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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Successful action tends to become an end in itself.
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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
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Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.
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Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
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The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.
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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
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However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
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Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.
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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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The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
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When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die young and playful.
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With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
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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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To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.
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