It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
Interpretation
Loving humanity is simpler than forming close bonds with individuals nearby.
Eric Hofferβs quote highlights the paradox of love, suggesting that while it may seem easy to care for people in general, true love requires effort and understanding in closer relationships. Loving 'oneβs neighbor' implies the complexity of personal connections, which often involve conflicts, misunderstandings, and the realities of individual flaws, making it a more challenging task than a broader, more abstract love for humanity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the challenges of intimacy in relationships.
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.
It is staggering that God should love sinners, yet it is true.
I fell in love with the thought that a human life could be a priestly conduit, a connecting link between earth and sky. As I grew and stumbled and, most important, as I began to love and be loved, I realized that the ultimate priest is the lover inside us
But you make me sing like a guitar humming . . .
Compassion is an action word with no boundaries.
There's no race, no religion, no class system, no color - nothing - no sexual orientation, that makes us better than anyone else. We're all deserving of love.
One word _x000D_ _x000D_ Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:_x000D_ _x000D_ That word is love.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.