“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.”
Section 21, Ch.5 The Poor
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts
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Eric Hoffer 240
American philosopher 1898–1983Related quotes

"Words Handed Down by Disciples" (Chapter 9).
No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997)

“Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black.
Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA178 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 178
1850s, The Fanaticism of the Democratic Party (February 1859)

“That which we die for lives as wholly as that which we live for dies.”

Interviewed in September 1972, as quoted in "Clemente Legend Growing" by Bob Addie, in The Washington Post (Wednesday, May 23, 1973), p. E5
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>