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We can never have enough of that which we really do not want.

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
Really
Never
Satisfaction
Enough

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...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.
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Successful action tends to become an end in itself.
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When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.
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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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Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
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We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.
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There is a time when the word eventually has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.
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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
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There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.
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One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.
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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.
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Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
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Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
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The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
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It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.
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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
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In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.
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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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