Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.
Interpretation
Fair play involves not attributing our own faults to others, as this reflects our inner struggles.
In this quote, Eric Hoffer highlights the importance of taking personal responsibility and not projecting our own feelings of guilt onto others. He suggests that when we blame others for our shortcomings, we are misusing them in a harmful way, akin to exploiting them. This perspective encourages self-reflection and accountability in our interactions.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal accountability.
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 my desire is possible, it means the system is already letting something else through.
We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.
Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.
Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.
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