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The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
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
Tables
Sick
Mankind
Strapped
Turn
Surgeons
Humanity
Operating
Turns
Insist
Soul
Operate
World
Table
More quotes by Eric Hoffer
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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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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For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.
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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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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 extreme attitude is a fight from the self.
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We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.
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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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A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
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We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact
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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
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In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
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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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There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
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Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.
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We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
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Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder.
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