Eric hoffer

We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire. eric hoffer

Hoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902 (or possibly 1898), the son of Elsa (née Goebel)and Knut Hoffer, a cabinetmaker.[3] His parents were immigrants fromAlsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English.[4][5] When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight ofstairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma. ("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").[6] After his mother's deathhe was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to readas much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.
Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. Thecabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Sensing that warm Los Angeles was the best place for a poor man, Hoffer took a bus there in 1920. He spent thenext 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs. On one such job, selling oranges door-to-door, he discovered he was a natural salesman and could easilymake good money. Uncomfortable with this discovery, he quit after one day.[7]
In 1931, he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but the attempt failed as he could not bring himselfto swallow the poison.[8] The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length...