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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
Self
Real
Urge
Urges
Escape
Rational
Obvious
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It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.
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Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
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It is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
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Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
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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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Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
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The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth
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We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
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In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
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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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The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.
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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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When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.
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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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To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
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Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.
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Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
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Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
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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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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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