Eric Hoffer (Philosopher) Much of the details of Hoffer's early life is through his own accounts, with no concrete proof, other than his word, and some aspects of it have been challenged by historians. (Ref.?) Hoffer was born in 1898 in The Bronx, New York, to Knut and Elsa (Goebel) Hoffer. His parents were immigrants from Alsace, then part of Imperial Germany. By age five, Hoffer could already read in both English and his parents' native German. When he was five, his mother fell down the stairs with him in her arms. He later recalled, "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." Hoffer spoke with a pronounced German accent all his life, and spoke the language fluently. He was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German immigrant named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he might lose it again, he seized on the opportunity to read as much as he could. His recovery proved permanent, but Hoffer never abandoned his reading habit. Hoffer was a young man when he also lost his father. The cabinetmaker's union paid for Knut Hoffer's funeral and gave Hoffer about $300 insurance money. He took a bus to Los Angeles and spent the next 10 years on Skid Row, reading, occasionally writing, and working at odd jobs. In 1931, he considered suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but he could not bring himself to do it. He left Skid Row and became a migrant worker, following the harvests in California. He acquired a library card where he worked, dividing his time "between the books and the brothels." He also prospected for gold in the mountains. Snowed in for the winter, he read the Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne impressed Hoffer deeply, and Hoffer often made reference to him. He also developed a respect for America's underclass, which he said was "lumpy with talent."
Top 10 Eric Hoffer Quotes
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world which no longer exists.
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men
It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
He wrote a novel, Four Years in Young Hank's Life, and a novella, Chance and Mr. Kunze, both partly autobiographical. He also penned a long article based on his experiences in a federal work camp, "Tramps and Pioneers." It was never published, but a truncated version appeared in Harper's Magazine after he became well known.
Hoffer tried to enlist in the US Army at age 40 during World War II, but he was rejected because of a hernia. Instead, he began work as a longshoreman on the docks of San Francisco in 1943. At the same time, he began to write seriously.
Hoffer left the docks in 1964 and retired from public life in 1970. In 1970, he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hoffer called himself an atheist but had sympathetic views of religion and described it as a positive force.He died at his home in San Francisco in 1983 at the age of 84
Hoffer, who was an only child, never married. He fathered a child with Lili Fabilli Osborne, named Eric Osborne, who was born in 1955 and raised by Lili Osborne and her husband, Selden Osborne. Lili Fabilli Osborne became acquainted with Hoffer through her husband, a fellow longshoreman and acquaintance of Hoffer's. Despite the affair and Lili Osborne later co-habitating with Hoffer, Selden Osborne and Hoffer remained on good terms.
Hoffer referred to Eric Osborne as his son or godson. Lili Fabilli Osborne died in 2010 at the age of 93. Prior to her death, Osborne was the executrix of Hoffer's estate, and vigorously controlled the rights to his intellectual property.
Hoffer came to public attention with the 1951 publication of his first book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. 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.
Hoffer argued that fanatical and extremist cultural movements, whether religious or political, arose under predictable circumstances: when large numbers of people come to believe that their individual lives are worthless and ruined, that the modern world is irreparably corrupt, and that hope lies only in joining a larger group that demands radical changes. Hoffer believed that self-esteem and a sense of satisfaction with one's life were of central importance to psychological well-being. He thus focused on what he viewed as the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. For example, Hoffer noted that leaders of mass movements were often frustrated intellectuals, from Adolf Hitler in 20th century Europe to Hong Xiuquan's failure to advance in the Chinese bureaucracy of the 19th Century.
A core principle in the book is Hoffer's assertion that mass movements are interchangeable: in the Germany of the 1920s and the 1930s, the Communists and Nazis were ostensibly enemies but routinely swapped members as they competed for the same kind of marginalized, angry people, and fanatical Communists became Nazis and vice versa.
Almost 2000 years previously, Saul, a fanatical persecutor of Christians, became Paul, a Christian. For the "true believer," Hoffer argued that substance of any particular group is less important than being part of an energized movement.
Hoffer also 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 includes extensive discussions of Islam and Christianity.Hoffer appeared on public television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s.
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