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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.

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
Sometimes
Much
Things
Usually
Looking

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.
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In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.
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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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There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
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However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
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Intolerance is the ''Do Not Touch'' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness.
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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
Eric Hoffer
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Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.
Eric Hoffer
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The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.
Eric Hoffer
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The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.
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A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.
Eric Hoffer
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Eric Hoffer
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
Eric Hoffer
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There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
Eric Hoffer
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I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.
Eric Hoffer