Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that people often pretend to be something they are not, not to conceal their flaws, but to cover their inner void or lack of purpose.
Eric Hoffer's quote highlights the psychological complexity of human behavior, suggesting that individuals often wear masks not to disguise their malevolence or ugliness, but instead to obscure their feelings of emptiness or lack of fulfillment. This profound insight implies that the absence of substance within ourselves is more challenging to confront than any negative traits, driving us to create façades that distract from our true selves.
In practice
During a motivational speech on authenticity, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of being true to oneself.
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.
The eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate, it is immutable.
Did Buddha teach that the many was real and the ego unreal, while orthodox Hinduism regards the One as the real, and the many as unreal?" the Swami was asked. "Yes", answered the Swami. "And what Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and I have added to this is, that the Many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the same mind at different times and in different attitudes.
I have ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect.
Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.
The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.
Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of a ll Utopias - boredom.
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