We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that love often leads to rivalry, while hatred unites people against a common enemy.
In this quote, Eric Hoffer observes the complex nature of human emotions, highlighting how love can foster competition among those who care for each other, often viewing one another as rivals. Conversely, hate tends to create a sense of solidarity among individuals, as they bond over their shared disdain for a common target, illustrating how negative emotions can unify people more effectively than positive ones.
In practice
During a discussion about the challenges of romantic relationships, one might quote Hoffer to illustrate how love can lead to competition.
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.
When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.
Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about.
Why do you always have to be right. Why do you always have to have the last word. For once in your life just let it go.
Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.
People don't always express their inner thoughts to one another; a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person really thinks or feels.
To memorize a scripture is to forge a new friendship.
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