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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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Eric Hoffer
Age: 84 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 25
Died: 1983
Died: May 21
Philosopher
Psychologist
Writer
New York City
New York
Creature
Personifies
Devil
Ferocious
Creatures
Cellars
Within
Sealed
Nature
Psyche
Around
Cunning
Stills
Infinitely
Still
Subconscious

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To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews , and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.
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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
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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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Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
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Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.
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We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.
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What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
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One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.
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Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.
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There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
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