We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
Interpretation
Adapting to new experiences often challenges our self-esteem and requires us to prove our worth.
This quote by Eric Hoffer emphasizes the difficulty of facing new and radical changes in life. He suggests that such changes test our self-esteem and confidence, as we must adjust and prove ourselves in situations that demand growth and transformation. Hoffer highlights that while encountering the unfamiliar can cause inner turmoil, it is through these challenges that we learn to adapt and build our confidence.
In practice
In a motivational speech discussing career changes and personal development.
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.
In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.
What we know from lab studies is that it's never too late to break a habit. Habits are malleable throughout your entire life. But we also know that the best way to change a habit is to understand its structure - that once you tell people about the cue and the reward and you force them to recognize what those factors are in a behavior, it becomes much, much easier to change.
We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes - and we must.
Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries.
We have a planetary emergency. We have to find a way to create, in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.
The Autumn is old; The sere leaves are flying; He hath gather'd up gold, And now he is dying;- Old age, begin sighing!
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