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Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
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
Inner
Becomes
Environment
Society
Ensues
Spiritual
Stagnation
Made
Predictable
Men
Unpredictable
Life
Wholly
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
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Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.
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God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: I am what I am. Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: I am what I am not.
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Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
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In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
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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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A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life
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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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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 the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
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Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
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The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.
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All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
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Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.
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The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.
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To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.
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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
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It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
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