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Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

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
Animal
Dogs
Learn
Cat
Become
Supposed
Men
Animals
Dog
Horse
Growth
Horses
Learning
Cats

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Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
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It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.
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Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
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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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The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
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Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
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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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