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The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.

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
Believer
Basically
Violent
True
Persons
Rowdy
Person
Submissive
Matter
Obedient
Acts

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Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
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A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life
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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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For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.
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The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.
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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
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It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
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Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.
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Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
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How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
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Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.
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Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
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The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else--we are the busiest people in the world.
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The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
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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 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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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
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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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