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A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.

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
Much
Leadership
Worth
Workingman
Economy
Automated
Society
Anathema
Free
Minimum
Social
Threat
Sense
Function
Order
Intellectual

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
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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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Language was invented to ask questions.
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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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Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
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Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
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You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.
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The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else--we are the busiest people in the world.
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With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
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Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.
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A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.
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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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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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We cannot hate those who we despise.
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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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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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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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