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The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.

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
Obvious
Also
Self
Real
Urge
Urges
Escape
Rational

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The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
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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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We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true they ruin our dreams.
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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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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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There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.
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Quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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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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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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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
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Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.
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We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
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Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
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Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
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The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness and both these ends are reached by imitation.
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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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Woe to him inside a non-conformist clique who does not conform to non-conformity.
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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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