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Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1902 - May 21, 1983) was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen

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In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world which no longer exists.

– Eric Hoffer

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Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

– Eric Hoffer

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Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

– Eric Hoffer

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No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.

– Eric Hoffer

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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.

– Eric Hoffer

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People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

– Eric Hoffer

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The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

– Eric Hoffer

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The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.

– Eric Hoffer

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We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.

– Eric Hoffer

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When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

– Eric Hoffer

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You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

– Eric Hoffer

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You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

– Eric Hoffer

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The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.

– Eric Hoffer

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The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

– Eric Hoffer

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A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.

– Eric Hoffer

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All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.

– Eric Hoffer

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Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

– Eric Hoffer

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It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.

– Eric Hoffer

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One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

– Eric Hoffer

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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 opportunites 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.

– Eric Hoffer

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A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

– Eric Hoffer

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Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

– Eric Hoffer

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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.

– Eric Hoffer

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Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

– Eric Hoffer

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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

– Eric Hoffer

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However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.

– Eric Hoffer

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If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

– Eric Hoffer

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In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

– Eric Hoffer

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It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.

– Eric Hoffer

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It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

– Eric Hoffer

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It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.

– Eric Hoffer

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Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

– Eric Hoffer

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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity

– Eric Hoffer

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Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.

– Eric Hoffer

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Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.

– Eric Hoffer

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Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

– Eric Hoffer

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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.

– Eric Hoffer

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Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

– Eric Hoffer

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Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.

– Eric Hoffer

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The beginning of thought is in disagreement -- not only with others but also with ourselves.

– Eric Hoffer

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The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

– Eric Hoffer

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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

– Eric Hoffer

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The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

– Eric Hoffer

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The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

– Eric Hoffer

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The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.

– Eric Hoffer

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The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.

– Eric Hoffer

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The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.

– Eric Hoffer

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The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

– Eric Hoffer

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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.

– Eric Hoffer

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The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.

– Eric Hoffer

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The real haves are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real have nots are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.

– Eric Hoffer

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The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

– Eric Hoffer

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The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbors as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant of others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

– Eric Hoffer

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The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

– Eric Hoffer

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There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

– Eric Hoffer

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There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

– Eric Hoffer

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There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

– Eric Hoffer

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There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

– Eric Hoffer

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They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

– Eric Hoffer

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To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.

– Eric Hoffer

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To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats - we know it not.

– Eric Hoffer

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To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.

– Eric Hoffer

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We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

– Eric Hoffer

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We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.

– Eric Hoffer

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We cannot be sure that we have something to live for unless we are ready to die for it.

– Eric Hoffer

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We feel free when we escape -- even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.

– Eric Hoffer

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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.

– Eric Hoffer

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We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

– Eric Hoffer

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We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

– Eric Hoffer

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We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us.

– Eric Hoffer

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Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.

– Eric Hoffer

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Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

– Eric Hoffer

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Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

– Eric Hoffer

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With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

– Eric Hoffer

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Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.

– Eric Hoffer

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You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, and animals - as by turning him into a machine. Both the natural and the mechanical are the opposite of that which is uniquely human. Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines. It is also obvious that when man domesticated animals and plants he acquired self-made machines for the production of food, power, and beauty.

– Eric Hoffer

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eff_c
a simpler typeface could be easier on the eyes and the mind
LikeReply4 years ago
Jeffrey Kamberos
He had soul. "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Albert Camus
LikeReply 15 years ago

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