We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that love often leads to rivalry, while hatred unites people against a common enemy.
In this quote, Eric Hoffer observes the complex nature of human emotions, highlighting how love can foster competition among those who care for each other, often viewing one another as rivals. Conversely, hate tends to create a sense of solidarity among individuals, as they bond over their shared disdain for a common target, illustrating how negative emotions can unify people more effectively than positive ones.
In practice
During a discussion about the challenges of romantic relationships, one might quote Hoffer to illustrate how love can lead to competition.
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.
To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
I was tired of a system where women waited around for men to send them a message or ask them out. With Bumble - first a dating app, now a social network that helps you make empowering connections in love, life, and business - women had to make the first move, or the match was void.
It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.
The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them.
People say I train dogs, but in many ways I train people.
I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.
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