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The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.

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
Mark
Along
Leader
Ability
Social
Without
Vigor
Exceptional

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The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
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First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.
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A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
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Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
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To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews , and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.
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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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A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
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Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.
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The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
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Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
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The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
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Creativity is discontent translated into arts.
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It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
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It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
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We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
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Naivete in grownups is often charming but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
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