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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.

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
Leader
Turn
Turns
Children
Followers
Strive
Leaders

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In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.
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The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
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Anger is a prelude to courage.
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Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
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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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All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
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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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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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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
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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.
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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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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 wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
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Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.
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Facts are counterrevolutionary.
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That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.
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We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
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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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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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