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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.

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
Forced
Nature
Partakes
Deliberate
Originality
Protest

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
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Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
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Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience... The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending -- for making a show -- and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.
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To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.
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Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.
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The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.
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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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Successful action tends to become an end in itself.
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Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
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The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.
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Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
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Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
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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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The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.
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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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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Eric Hoffer
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The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.
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We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
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