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Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .

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
Loyalty
Individual
Nation
Faithful
True
Results
Whole
Possible
Fellow
Brotherly
Love
Nations
Believer
Relatively
Party
Unity
Loose
Church
Fellows
Collectives
Society
Individuals
Collective
Free
Result

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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
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Successful action tends to become an end in itself.
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It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
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The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power.
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The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.
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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
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When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong it easily becomes a fashion.
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To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.
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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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Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.
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...the majority of people cannot endure the bareness and futility of their lives unless they have some ardent dedication, or some passionate pursuit in which they can lose themselves.
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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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Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.
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It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
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It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.
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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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