While reading Eric Hoffer's book The Passionate State of Mind, I came across some thought-provoking aphorisms about self-knowledge, self-deception, and personal identity. Here are the key sentences, which I've extracted and strung together for my own purposes:
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. (§58)
To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. (§59)
The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it. (§61)
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. (§128)
When we are not governed too much by what other people think of us, we are likely to be tolerant toward the behavior and the opinions of others. So, too, when we do not crave to seem important we are not awed by the importance of others. (§134)
As noted recently, although Hoffer had a powerful nose for generalizations about the foibles and failings of humanity, I prefer to translate such pronouncements into the personal, the particular, and (I might add) the positive.
Thus I ask myself:
The attempt to answer these questions will require so much self-discipline that it'll be like a workout regimen for the soul! If I make any progress (perhaps with a little help from my friends, or even from Shakespeare), I'll report back...
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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