Working Class Roots
Hoffer was influenced by his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:
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- 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.
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He once remarked, "my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree." When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a longshoreman. Hoffer has been dubbed by some authors as a "longshoreman philosopher".
Read more about this topic: Eric Hoffer
Famous quotes containing the words working, class and/or roots:
“Wearing overalls on weekdays, painting somebody else’s house to earn money? You’re working class. Wearing overalls at weekends, painting your own house to save money? You’re middle class.”
—Lawrence Sutton, British prizewinner in competition in Sunday Correspondent (London)
“Indeed, there are no easy correlations between parental ideology, class or race and “successful” child development. Many children the world over have revealed a kind of toughness and plasticity that make the determined efforts of some parents to spare their children the slightest pain seem ironic.”
—Robert Coles (20th century)
“Einstein is not ... merely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)