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

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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.
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In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.
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The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
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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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The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
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Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
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Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
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We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
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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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...the majority of people cannot endure the bareness and futility of their lives unless they have some ardent dedication, or some passionate pursuit in which they can lose themselves.
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The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
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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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Language was invented to ask questions.
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