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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
Looking
Sometimes
Much
Things
Usually

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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
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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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It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
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Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
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My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
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Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.
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It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
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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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To change everything, simply change your attitude.
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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
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The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness and both these ends are reached by imitation.
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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
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The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.
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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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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
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The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.
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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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Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
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