There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that bold actions often mask deeper feelings of guilt or self-deception.
Eric Hoffer's quote reflects the idea that those who display confidence or self-righteousness may actually be driven by an underlying guilt. It serves as a commentary on human behavior, indicating that outward bravado can often be a façade for inner moral conflict, revealing the complexities of the human psyche.
In practice
During a speech on moral integrity, one might invoke this quote to highlight the importance of sincerity.
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 better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.
If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.
So the single most vital step on your journey towards enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.
'Facts, facts, facts,' cries the scientist if he wants to emphasize the necessity of a firm foundation for science. What is a fact? A fact is a thought that is true. But the scientist will surely not recognize something which depends on men's varying states of mind to be the firm foundation of science.
To be a vegetarian is to disagree - to disagree with the course of things today... starvation, cruelty - we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.
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