Quote

Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.

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
Grow
Grows
Evil
Sundered
Cannot
Tilt
Together
Equilibrium
Trying
Bound
Good
Bounds
Toward

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Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be methodically and consistently ruthless.
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We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
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We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
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When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world.
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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
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The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose 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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people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.
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The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.
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The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.
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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
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The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.
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Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
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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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To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews , and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.
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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.
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