Quote

To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.

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
Mood
Achievement
Playful
Aware
Alienated
Fruitful
Immune
Resentment
Propaganda
Fuel

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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.
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To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
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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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The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
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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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It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
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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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For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.
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Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
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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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Anger is a prelude to courage.
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A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
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Faith is primarily a process of identification the process by which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal.
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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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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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The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
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It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
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Facts are counterrevolutionary.
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