It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.
Interpretation
People often possess deeper subtleties in their thoughts and feelings than what is outwardly apparent.
Eric Hoffer's quote suggests that our perceptions of others may be misleading, as individuals often harbor more complex emotions and thoughts beneath the surface. By acknowledging this nuance, we can cultivate a greater understanding and empathy towards others, allowing for more meaningful relationships and interactions.
In practice
During a team meeting, you might use this quote to remind colleagues to consider each other's perspectives before jumping to conclusions.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.
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 opportunities 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.
If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.
Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.
You are the luminous mystery in which the entire universe with its forms and phenomena arises and subsides. When this realization dawns there is a complete transformation of your personal self into your universal self . . . the complete loss of all fear, including death. You have become a being who radiates love the same way the sun radiates light. You have finally arrived at the place from which your journey began.
We have the universe to roam in in imagination. It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity.
People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there. Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way.
A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged.
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