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One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.

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
Privilege
Scandalously
Society
Asinine
Free
Reputations
Without
Harming
Privileges
Intellectuals
Surprising
Reputation

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Facts are counterrevolutionary.
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For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future but an excuse can last for life.
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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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A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.
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When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
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A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
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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.
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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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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 always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.
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In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
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It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
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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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Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
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Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.
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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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How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
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However much we guard against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us.
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When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.
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