“Perhaps people throw themselves into heated polemics to give content to their lives, to warm their hearts. What Luther said of hatred is true of all quarreling. There is nothing like a feud to make life seem full and interesting.”

— Eric Hoffer

Entry (1950)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

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Eric Hoffer 240

American philosopher 1898–1983

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Casanova: History of My Life (p. 153)
Classics Revisited (1968)

“The changing seasons of the Midwest – the intense heat in summer, bitter cold in winter, and unsurpassable beauty and invigorating weather of fall and spring – is what makes it an interesting place to live. Only robust and virile people can live in such a climate and enjoy it.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Journal entry (January 6, 1942)

“Warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Entry in her journal (10 October 1922) which she tore out to send to John Middleton Murry, before changing her mind. This later became the last published entry in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927) edited by J. Middleton Murry
Context: Warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for. … This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it’s no longer so. I feel happy — deep down. All is well.

“people ruthless, people cruel
see the damage that some people do
full of hatred, full of pride
it's enough to make you lose your mind”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Ophelia (1998), Break Your Heart

“The prophet [ Isaiah ]… points out what will be the cause of this change; for he says that hatred, quarrel, and fighting will come to an end, because men will have a true knowledge of God. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters which cover the sea" (Isa. xi. ver. 9) Note it.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.11

“Perhaps what I would like is a truly democratic culture. Not a polemic nor a moralistic culture in the arts but a culture which permits one man to speak to another honestly and modestly and in freedom and to say what he thinks and what he feels, to express his doubts and his fears, his immoral as well as his moral impulses, to say what he thinks is true and what he thinks is false, and what he likes and what he does not like. What I am against is that we should all engage in the most vigorous and most polemic lying to each other for each other's benefit.”

George Oppen (1908–1984) American poet

Who could have the conceit, the self-confidence to believe that that is what we should do throughout all the rest of human history?
Letter to Charles Humboldt (mid-1962), p. 64
The Selected Letters of George Oppen (1990)