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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

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
Desire
Concerning
Without
Shelter
Men
Efforts
Insight
Praise
Theory
Food
Imperative
Effort
Imperatives

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Children are the keys of paradise.
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Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.
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Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
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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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Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
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We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.
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To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
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It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
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A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
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Where unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized.
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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 sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
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In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.
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America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.
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The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
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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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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
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Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.
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What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.
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people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.
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