We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that everyone has personal struggles, but those who seek public attention for them can often become disruptive.
Eric Hoffer's quote speaks to the nature of human suffering and the different ways people cope with their private problems. While everyone experiences difficulties and personal challenges, the true trouble arises when individuals seek validation or solutions through public means, which can lead to disruptive behavior affecting others. It highlights the importance of addressing one's issues privately and reflects on the societal impact of seeking public cures for personal ailments.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about mental health awareness to emphasize the importance of private healing.
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.
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it.
Fate's arrow, when expected, travels slow.
The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
When we accept all of life's contradictions, when we can comfortably flow between the banks of pleasure and pain, experiencing them both while getting stuck in neither, then we are free.
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