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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.
Topic: Age
Source: None
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Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
Topic: All About Love
Source: None
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No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.
Topic: All About the Self
Source: None
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The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything. - The Passionate State of the Mind, 1954.
Topic: Appearance
Source: None
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It is easier to love humanity than to love one's neighbor.
Topic: Brotherhood
Source: None
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
Topic: Computer / Technology / Science
Source: None
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How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
Topic: Death
Source: None
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The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
Topic: Discontent
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Exaggeration
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Fatigue
Source: None
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In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.
Topic: Finance and Economics
Source: None
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When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.
Topic: Finance and Economics
Source: None
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All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium.
Topic: Finance and Economics
Source: None
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The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.
Topic: Finance and Economics
Source: None
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Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.
Topic: Finance and Economics
Source: None
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Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.
Topic: Finance and Economics
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Frustration
Source: None
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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. How naive the cliche that money is the root of evil!
Topic: Genocide
Source: None
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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
Topic: Hatred
Source: None
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The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of thr majority in the middle.
Topic: History
Source: None
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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Topic: Ignorance
Source: None
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Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind. -Eric Hoffer.
Topic: Kindness
Source: None
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The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
Topic: Leaders
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Malice
Source: None
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There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.
Topic: Men and Women
Source: None
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The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.
Topic: Needs
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Negativity
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Negativity
Source: None
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To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.
Topic: Negativity
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Negativity
Source: None
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Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
Topic: Negativity
Source: None
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To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
Topic: Obvious
Source: None
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It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
Topic: Opposites
Source: None
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There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it
Topic: Opposites
Source: None
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When people are fee to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
Topic: Originality
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Perspective
Source: None
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To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
Topic: Perspective
Source: None
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It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.
Topic: Perspective
Source: None
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It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
Topic: Perspective
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Persuasion
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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...when we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal responsibility. There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement.
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses. Both the strong and the weak grasp at this alibi. The latter hide their malevolence under the virtue of obedience: they acted dishonorably because they had to obey orders. The strong, too, claim absolution by proclaiming themselves the chosen instrument of a higher power- God, history, fate, nation or humanity.
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to attain excellence. To discover what a man truly craves but knows he cannot have we must find the field in which he advocates absolute equality. By this test Communists are frustrated Capitalists.
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to preserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on.
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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...the differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change.
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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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. How naive the cliche that money is the root of evil!
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom.".
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.
Topic: Politics / Government
Source: None
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