To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.
Interpretation
Growing older brings a sense of shared experience, as aging is a universal process.
In this quote, Eric Hoffer reflects on the nature of aging and how it transforms our perception of life. He suggests that as we grow old, we come to realize that our experiences are not unique but rather shared by countless individuals throughout history. This realization can make us feel common, as we understand that the struggles and joys of youth have been felt by many before us, leading to a more profound connection with the human experience.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the inevitability of aging and its impact on perspective.
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.
A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.
And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live.
I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.
I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!
Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.
Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.
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