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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.

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
Becomes
Give
Nothing
Hysterical
Giving
Renunciation
Advocate
Preach
Generosity
Commitment

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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
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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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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
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A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life
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The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.
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Communists are frustrated capitalists.
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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
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Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
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All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
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An empty head is not really empty it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
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The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
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The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
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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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