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We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.

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
Ready
Opinion
Dies
Fact
Facts
Trying
Readiness
Indeed
Prove

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments.
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Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.
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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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The superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility.
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To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
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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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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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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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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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It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.
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In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.
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Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.
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We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
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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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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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It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
Eric Hoffer