"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."

Hoffer, Eric on Affectation
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"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."

Hoffer, Eric on Age and Aging
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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."

Hoffer, Eric on Age and Aging
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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."

Hoffer, Eric on Age and Aging
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"The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop."

Hoffer, Eric on Depression
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"Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation."

Hoffer, Eric on Disappointments
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"The greatest weariness comes from work not done."

Hoffer, Eric on Discontent
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"The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches."

Hoffer, Eric on Dissatisfaction
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"Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder."

Hoffer, Eric on Dissent
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"The beginning of thought is in disagreement -- not only with others but also with ourselves."

Hoffer, Eric on Dissent
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"Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice."

Hoffer, Eric on Dissipation
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"We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams."

Hoffer, Eric on Dreams
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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."

Hoffer, Eric on Ends and Means
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"Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting."

Hoffer, Eric on Escapism
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"It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak."

Hoffer, Eric on Evil
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"The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival."

Hoffer, Eric on Evolution
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"Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise."

Hoffer, Eric on Exaggeration
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"It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words."

Hoffer, Eric on Example
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"The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself."

Hoffer, Eric on Existence
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"Facts are counterrevolutionary."

Hoffer, Eric on Facts
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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."

Hoffer, Eric on Failure
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"There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house."

Hoffer, Eric on Failure
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"Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."

Hoffer, Eric on Faith
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"Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do."

Hoffer, Eric on Fatigue
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"Our greatest weariness comes from work not done."

Hoffer, Eric on Fatigue
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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."

Hoffer, Eric on Favors
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"Fear of becoming a has been keeps some people from becoming anything."

Hoffer, Eric on Fear
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"Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter unworthiness can be a source of courage."

Hoffer, Eric on Fear
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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."

Hoffer, Eric on Freedom
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"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail."

Hoffer, Eric on Freedom
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"Friendship Never explain -- your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe it anyway. A real friend never gets in your way, unless you happen to be on the way down. A friend is someone you can do nothing with and enjoy it. However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words."

Hoffer, Eric on Friends and Friendship
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"However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words."

Hoffer, Eric on Friends and Friendship
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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."

Hoffer, Eric on Frustration
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"We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious."

Hoffer, Eric on Generalizations
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"There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his."

Hoffer, Eric on Generosity
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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"

Hoffer, Eric on Achievement
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"Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible."

Hoffer, Eric on Ambition
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"The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility."

Hoffer, Eric on America
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"Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience."

Hoffer, Eric on Glory
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"To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws."

Hoffer, Eric on God
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