There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
Interpretation
Understanding is not a requirement for coexistence in society.
Eric Hoffer suggests that human society is built not on complete understanding among its members, but rather on the ability to coexist and interact despite differences. This implies that acceptance and tolerance are vital for social harmony, even when individuals do not fully grasp each other's perspectives or experiences.
In practice
In a speech about community living during a local town meeting.
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.
Listen to me, my Friend! My beloved Lord is within.
Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology - absolutely.
I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.
Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
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