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It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.

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
Cannot
Much
Good
Despise
Easier
Enemy
Hate

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An empty head is not really empty it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.
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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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God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: I am what I am. Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: I am what I am not.
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Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
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Anger is a prelude to courage.
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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.
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EVERY intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are.
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Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.
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It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
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To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.
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The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.
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It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.
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However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
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We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
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There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.
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It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.
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Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
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