I’ve been reading Eric Hoffer recently (again) -- an American social/political author (1902-1982) who wrote The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951) as well as 10 other books, including a book of aphorisms titled The Passionate State of Mind.
He was born poor in the Bronx and moved to California when his father died in 1920; he became a migrant worker and Longshoreman. He had little formal education; educating himself in public libraries.
On 9/27/77 he established the "Eric Hoffer-Lili Fabilli Essay Award" at the University of California, Berkeley, with the following letter:
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Dear Mrs. Bloomberg,
Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas. An average American book is twice as long as a British book on the same subject. The same is true of articles. (Compare Commentary with Encounter.)
There is not an idea that cannot be expressed in 200 words. But the writer must know precisely what he wants to say. If you have nothing to say and want badly to say it, then all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice.
Do not count a, of, the, and, etc. Averaging the number of words in a line is O.K.
Warm regards,
Eric Hoffer
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This web site provides an introduction to his works.
The following are some of his aphorisms at the site; I’ve chosen these because they express his MAIN psychological/social/political idea; one he repeats in different forms throughout his writing:
"Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us."
"We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails."
"Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self."
"The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others."
"Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world."
“You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others -- that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness."
"The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness."
"When we leave people on their own, we are delivering them into the hands of a ruthless taskmaster from whose bondage there is no escape. The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself."
"The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us -- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche."
"We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves."
Posted by Rick Penner at September 16, 2004 12:35 AM