Home > Work > Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

Working and Thinking on the Waterfront QUOTES

Working and Thinking on the Waterfront QUOTES

1 " All through the ages schoolmasters seem to have had the delusion that they could order society as readily as they could a classroom. "

― Eric Hoffer , Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

2 " I am still tired, and I begin to realize that the cure for tiredness is not rest. "

― Eric Hoffer , Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

3 " In the morning before turning to work I happened to think of the outcry of the intellectuals when the bay bridges were being built during the depression. The intellectual sees man's handiwork as a defacement. His glorification of nature stems partly from his deprecation of practical achievement. He does not object to monuments, statues, and non-utilitarian structures. The fact that bridges and freeways are utilitarian prompts him to see them as a defilement. With common people it is the other way around: they see man's work as an enhancement of nature. On the whole, common people have a better opinion of mankind than do the educated. If it is true as Bergson says that the 'human nature from which we turn away is the human nature we discover in the depths of our being" then the intellectual is in a hell of a fix. There is no getting away from it: education does not educate and gentle the heart. "

― Eric Hoffer , Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

4 " Education does not educate and gentle the heart. "

― Eric Hoffer , Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

5 " As easy a day as one could wish and no sort of unpleasantness. Still the depression this evening is as black as yesterday. I must face the fact that the chief reason for the depression is that I cannot compose. "

― Eric Hoffer , Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

6 " This morning I happened to think of the possibility that a virulent outburst of fanaticism may precede the death of a faith. Southern fanaticism on the issue of slavery was at its height when slavery became untenable, and the same is true of the present segregationist fervor. The fanaticism of the Crusades preceded the coming of the Renaissance, and the religious fervor of the Thirty Years' War was followed by the skepticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is also true that the rabid chauvinism of the second quarter of the twentieth century is followed by a considerable cooling of the nationalist spirit in the West. The question is how fast do burning problems burn themselves out. "

― Eric Hoffer , Working and Thinking on the Waterfront