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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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Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
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What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored.
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
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Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors they can be smelled.
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Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.
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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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People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
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We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact
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The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.
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A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
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If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.
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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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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
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It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice - that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt - are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.
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