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Language was invented to ask questions.

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
Humanness
Invented
Questions
Asks
Language

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
Eric Hoffer
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Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.
Eric Hoffer
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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
Eric Hoffer
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The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.
Eric Hoffer
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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
Eric Hoffer
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It is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
Eric Hoffer
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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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In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
Eric Hoffer
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The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.
Eric Hoffer
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First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
Eric Hoffer
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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
Eric Hoffer
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However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
Eric Hoffer
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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were the people, and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.
Eric Hoffer
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Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
Eric Hoffer
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Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
Eric Hoffer