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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
Masses
Mass
Freedom
Energy
Irritating
Exhilarating
Energies
Dissent
Released

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There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
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That which is unique and worthwhile in us makes itself felt only in flashes. If we do not know how to catch and savor the flashes we are without growth and exhilaration.
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The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
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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.
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It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
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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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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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The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.
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It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.
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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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Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.
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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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One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.
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The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.
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Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
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A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.
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EVERY intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are.
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I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
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Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
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To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
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