It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
Interpretation
Unfulfilled desires drive a nation toward a greater purpose and vision.
This quote by Eric Hoffer suggests that the recognition of unmet needs and wants within a society inspires a collective sense of purpose and destiny. It emphasizes that dissatisfaction can be a powerful motivator for national ambition and unity, as people strive to fulfill these desires collectively.
In practice
In a political speech discussing national goals, you can use this quote to emphasize the importance of aspirations.
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.
But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
Emancipated' women found out that the honesty, generosity, and camaraderie of men was a lie.
Who are you?" "I am Death," said the creature. "I thought that was obvious." "But you're so small!" "Only because you are small. You are young and far from your Death, September, so I seem as anything would seem if you saw it from a long way off-very small, very harmless. But I am always closer than I appear. As you grow, I shall grow with you, until at the end, I shall loom huge and dark over your bed, and you will shut your eyes so as not to see me.
Day to day and doing the work and getting to that honest point - that, for me, is always about - and always will be as long as I do this - refining and refining and refining and refining the truth... constantly being as truthful and honest and raw and real as you can be.
It provokes the desire but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off.
It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
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