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America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.

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
Stills
America
Still
Best
Anywhere
Country
Common
Make
White
Men
Black
Else

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The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
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The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.
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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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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
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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.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
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The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
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There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
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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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First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
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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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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.
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
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No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion it is an evil government.
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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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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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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
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