Eric Hoffer

Quotes

• “My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.”
• “It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals... You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on.”
• “Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.”
• “It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.”
• “It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.”
• “Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.”

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Key facts

Born

( 1902-07-25 ) July 25, 1902, New York City, U.S.

Died

May 21, 1983 (1983-05-21) (aged 80), San Francisco, California, U.S.

Occupation

Author, longshoreman

Genre

Philosophy , social criticism

Notable awards

Presidential Medal of Freedom , 1983

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image

Eric Hoffer in LBJ Oval Office.jpg

via Wikidata · CC0