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...the majority of people cannot endure the bareness and futility of their lives unless they have some ardent dedication, or some passionate pursuit in which they can lose themselves.

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
Majority
Unless
Bareness
Lose
Futility
Loses
Ardent
Lives
Dedication
Cannot
Pursuit
People
Endure
Passionate

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Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
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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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Creativity is discontent translated into arts.
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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.
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We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.
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We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.
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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
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Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
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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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The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power.
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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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It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.
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Children are the keys of paradise.
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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 thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
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People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a have type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a have not type of self.
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Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
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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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