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Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.

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
Action
Ideas
Prelude
Significance

More quotes by Eric Hoffer

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The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
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In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them
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Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
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In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.
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A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.
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My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
Eric Hoffer
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A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.
Eric Hoffer
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.
Eric Hoffer
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You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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Where unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
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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Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.
Eric Hoffer
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It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.
Eric Hoffer
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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
Eric Hoffer
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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
Eric Hoffer
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We are unified both by hating in common and by being hated in common.
Eric Hoffer
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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.
Eric Hoffer
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An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.
Eric Hoffer