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The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.

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
Equally
Provide
Social
Problem
Important
Untalented
Confronts
Troublesome
Engineering

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The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.
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Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
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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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We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.
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A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.
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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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There is a time when the word eventually has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.
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The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.
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The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.
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The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
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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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The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.
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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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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
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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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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
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