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If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

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
Life
Degrees
Imposing
Everyday
Tastes
Taste
Continuity
Society
Preserve
Values
Preserves
Learn
Stability
Keep
Degree
Adolescents
Must
Fantasy
Fantasies

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The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
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For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.
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Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
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The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.
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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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Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
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Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
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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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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.
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When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.
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We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
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A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
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Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.
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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
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Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
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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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