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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

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Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.
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The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.
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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
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In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.
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The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.
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The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause. God wishes, said Calvin, that one should put aside all humanity when it is a question of striving for His glory.
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Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
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Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
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It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.
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Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
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I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
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Those who feel guilty are afraid and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.
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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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It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.
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When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die young and playful.
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Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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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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