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.
Interpretation
Desiring more can lead to greater frustration than lacking basic needs.
This quote by Eric Hoffer highlights the paradox of human desire and dissatisfaction. It suggests that people often feel more frustrated when they have many possessions or blessings but still yearn for more, compared to those who have nothing but are content with their minimal needs. The essence of the quote centers around the concept that desire can breed dissatisfaction, often more intensely than the absence of material possessions.
In practice
In a motivational talk about overcoming feelings of inadequacy.
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 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 the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
It is intolerable that the world's religions - founded on the values of love and compassion - should provide a pretext for the expression of hatred and violence.
By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that' becomes 'I'm like that.'
So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding.
To continue living, we have to die. That's the story of humanity - generation after generation - that we are going to die. There's nothing dramatic about death except that one loses one's life.
Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.
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