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Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
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
Turns
Despot
Power
Despots
Men
Despotism
Clay
Anti
Absolutes
Absolute
Turned
Possessors
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
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We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
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Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
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We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
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For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.
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Where unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized.
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It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
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There is a time when the word eventually has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
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Whenever we proclaim the uniqueness of a religion , a truth , a leader, a nation, a race, a part or a holy cause, we are also proclaiming our own uniqueness.
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There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.
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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 basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
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People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
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Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.
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To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.
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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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