They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.
- Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983, American author, philosopher
Image source: Eric Hoffer Project
Excerpts from sites about Eric Hoffer:
Out of the Ordinary For one longshoreman, ideas were everything.
by Jeanene Harlick - Stanford Magazine, January/February, 2003
There are almost 50 boxes of letters to Hoffer in the campus-based Hoover Archives, which acquired the commonsense author’s papers in 2000. His fan mail confirms the extraordinary impact of a man who insisted he was ordinary. If he’d ever had a résumé, it would have listed 10 years of odd jobs on L.A.’s Skid Row, another decade doing migratory farm work and panning for gold, and a quarter-century as a dockhand on the San Francisco waterfront. But Hoffer also read and soaked up knowledge endlessly, wrote pithy books about society and politics, held Wednesday seminars at UC-Berkeley and served on Lyndon Johnson’s Presidential Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. In Hoffer, people from all walks of life found an original thinker who bemoaned intellectualism and championed the common man.
Erick Hoffer 16
Potpourri Essays, May 11, 2007
Not only is the following thumbnail biography of Eric Hoffer an interesting yarn in itself, but his theories of fanaticism and mass movements are as relevant today as when he wrote them in the 1950’s & 60’s.
Except for the quotes from his books; a quote from a column about Hoffer written in 2003 by Thomas Sowell on the 20th anniversary of his death; and a few facts from the biography of Hoffer written in 1982 by James Thomas Baker from a now out of print book I purchased from the used book market, the rest I have pulled from my memory banks of the interviews and statements made by commentators in the 1960’s & 70’s (It is what happened yesterday that I can’t recall).
Eric Hoffer was a most improbable author. Yes, there have been many of that genre in literary history such as the blind poet Milton, multiple deserter from whaling crews Melville, and the jailbird O. Henry (aka William Porter) to name only a few, yet when his story is told you will realize Hoffer was indeed one of the unlikeliest.
Click here to see a neat illustration of Hoffer by Elliott Banfield at Picasa Web Albums
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