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Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
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
Energies
Dissent
Released
Masses
Mass
Freedom
Energy
Irritating
Exhilarating
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.
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We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
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There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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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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Communists are frustrated capitalists.
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The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
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There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
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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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The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.
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It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.
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Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
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The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.
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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.
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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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