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The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.

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
Whose
Challenged
Faith
Creed
Others
Creeds
Proselytizing
Strongest
Fanatic
Impulse
Strengthens
Likely
Converting
Develop
Legitimacy
Easily
Fanatics

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People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.
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Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.
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The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
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When you automate an industry you modernize it when you automate a life you primitivize it.
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The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.
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One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
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Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
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Children are the keys of paradise.
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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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Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
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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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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.
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The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
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Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.
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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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Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
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