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

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The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.
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The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
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There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a have type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a have not type of self.
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Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.
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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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However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
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When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong it easily becomes a fashion.
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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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The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
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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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The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility
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The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.
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