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The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.

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
Really
Cause
Embraces
Hold
Fanatics
Principles
Primarily
Causes
Holiness
Society
Onto
Need
Desperate
Justness
Needs
Principle
Stickler
Something
Embrace
Fanatic

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Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
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The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.
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Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .
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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
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We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.
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People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
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Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
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The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.
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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
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Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.
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No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion it is an evil government.
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The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness and both these ends are reached by imitation.
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There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.
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Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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