Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
People have personal flaws, but trouble arises when they demand public solutions for these private issues.
In plain terms
Trouble comes when people make their private problems a public demand.
What can you take from it?
Keep personal issues private instead of demanding public fixes.

Where it applies

  • political activism
  • community disputes
  • workplace conflicts

Putting it to work

  • resolve personal issues internally
  • set boundaries on public complaints

Questions to consider

  • When should private problems become public concerns?
  • How do you distinguish between a private ail and a public right?

Another view

Some private issues like health or safety inherently require public support.

More from Eric Hoffer

  1. We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

    Permalink to quote #216
  2. We almost always have something to prove when we act heroically. We prove to ourselves and others that we are not what we and others thought we were. Our real …

    Permalink to quote #218
  3. We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.

    Permalink to quote #215

Related quotes

  1. There can be no country or dignity without unity of the people, and there can be no unity without agreement, and there can be no agreement without conciliation…

    Rene MoawadRene Moawad quote #1
  2. In any war, there are people who disappear.

    Leopoldo GaltieriLeopoldo Galtieri quote #1
  3. Among the words that can be all things to all men, the word 'race' has a fair claim to being the most common, most ambiguous and most explosive. No one today w…

    Jacques BarzunJacques Barzun quote #1