Eric Hoffer Quotes
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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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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
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We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
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Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
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The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
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What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
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A man by himself is in bad company.
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We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.
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Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
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It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
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The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
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It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.
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Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
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The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
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Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
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Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
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The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
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Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
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Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.
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It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.