“We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.”
― Eric Hoffer
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
― Eric Hoffer
“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
“Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Anger is the prelude to courage.”
― Eric Hoffer
“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations — past and present — are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.”
― Eric Hoffer
“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.”
― Eric Hoffer
Administrator says:
Hoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902, the son of Elsa (née Goebel) and Knut Hoffer, a cabinetmaker. His parents were immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English.
When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma, commenting “I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight and for a time my memory.”
After his mother’s death he was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.
Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker’s union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Hoffer then took a bus to Los Angeles in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles’ skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs.
In 1931, he considered committing suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and lived, by preference, “between the books and the brothels.”
A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read the Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne’s book impressed Hoffer deeply, and he often made reference to its importance for him. He also developed a great respect for America’s underclass, which, he declared, was “lumpy with talent.” During the 1930s, he wrote a novel, Four Years in Young Hank’s Life, and a novelette, Chance and Mr. Kunze, both partly autobiographical, and a long article about his experiences and revelations in a federal work camp, “Tramps and Pioneers.” The fictional work was never published, but a truncated version of the article was published by Harper’s Magazine after Hoffer became well known.
Hoffer attempted to enlist in the Armed forces in 1942 but was rejected because of a hernia. To contribute to the war effort, he worked as a longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero. During this period he began to write.
Hoffer retired from the docks in 1967 and from public life in 1970.[10] In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.
He died at his home in San Francisco on May 21, 1983 at the age of 80.
Hoffer believed that self-esteem was of central importance to psychological well-being. He focused on what he viewed as the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. Concerned about the rise of totalitarian governments, especially those of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, he tried to find the roots of these “madhouses” in human psychology. He postulated that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. In The True Believer (1951) he claimed that a passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others was an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one’s own life. The book discusses religious and political mass movements, and extensive discussions of Islam and Christianity. A core principle in the book is Hoffer’s assertion that mass movements are interchangeable: fanatical Nazis became fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists became fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, became Paul, a fanatical Christian. For the “true believer,” substance is less important than being part of a movement.
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11th February 2013 at 8:36 am
efarmer says:
We grew up watching our dad reading Eric Hoffer and I have those books on my shelf now. I have read and high lighted The True Believer so many times that I had to order a new copy.
I highly recommend this book as it is an amazing study of mass movements, and we have a major case study going on right now. Hoffer was an amazing thinker.
EF
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11th February 2013 at 8:46 am
Eddie says:
Been reading some more..I like this one:
“Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams,”
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11th February 2013 at 9:27 am
Eddie says:
“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.”
Coming from humble beginnings myself, I have a soft spot for self-taught blue collar intellectuals, I guess.
If I were a Jew, Hoffer would be my kind of rabbi. In fact, he’s my kind of rabbi anyway.
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11th February 2013 at 12:07 pm
backwardsevolution says:
Hysterical blindness? Because his mother was dying, perhaps he did not want to see, did not want to remember for awhile. It happens. Poor little guy!
“Hoffer believed that self-esteem was of central importance to psychological well-being.”
It is everything, and often people are unaware that it is lacking.
I’ll have to get a copy of The True Believer. Thanks.
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11th February 2013 at 2:15 pm
TPC says:
Went out and bought True Believer last night.
Its brilliant. I tend to speed read, but his work is so pithy I find myself reading outloud just so I won’t miss anything.
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11th February 2013 at 1:05 pm
howard in nyc says:
i did not know much about hoffer, thanks for the introduction. i’ll pick up a copy of true believer as well. i liked this, from his wiki page–right up my alley wrt my views on israel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer )
________
In May 1968, about a year after the Six Day War, he wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times titled “Israel’s Peculiar Position:”
“The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single one.”[15]
Hoffer asks why “everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world” and why Israel should sue for peace after its victory.[15]
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11th February 2013 at 1:22 pm
Stucky says:
More quotes …
“An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish- hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to an empty head.”
“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”
“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
“We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.”
“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.” [I might make this MY motto.]
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11th February 2013 at 1:34 pm