Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Interpretation
Compassion distinguishes itself as a constant virtue in the midst of our internal struggles between good and evil.
In this quote, Eric Hoffer reflects on the complexity of human nature, where we often find ourselves torn between our good and evil impulses. Compassion, however, serves as a steady anchor that transcends these conflicting forces, suggesting that it provides a pure, unchanging quality that elevates our moral experiences and decisions.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of community service, this quote could emphasize the role of compassion in our lives.
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.
Math . . . music .. . starry nights . . . These are secular ways of achieving transcendence, of feeling lifted into a grand perspective. It's a sense of being awed by existence that almost obliterates the self. Religious people think of it as an essentially religious experience but it's not. It's an essentially human experience.
If something is right (or wrong) for us, itβs right (or wrong) for others. It follows that if itβs wrong for Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and a long list of others to bomb Washington and New York, then itβs wrong for Rumsfeld to bomb Afghanistan (on much flimsier pretexts), and he should be brought before war crimes trials.
Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.
To remember oneself means the same thing as to be aware of oneself - I am. It is not a function, not thinking, not feeling; it is a different state of consciousness.
As people used to be wrong about the motion of the sun, so they are still wrong about the motion of the future. The future stands still, it is we who move in infinite space.
I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me.
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