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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

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The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
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Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
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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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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.
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When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.
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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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Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
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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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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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Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
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Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
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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 least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
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The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
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First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
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A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.
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A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
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It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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