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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
Despise
Easier
Enemy
Hate
Cannot
Much
Good

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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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It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility
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The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
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When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
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Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.
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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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It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
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The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
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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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Successful action tends to become an end in itself.
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This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter
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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.
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Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.
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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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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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There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
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