Eric Hoffer Quotes

I labor to be brief, and manage to be obscure.

We should not write so that it is possible for [the reader] to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

If I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

Some girls like to say one thing and mean another. And me being who I am, I'm very straightforward. Everything is very black and white for me. I don't really like playing mind games.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

I strive to be brief but I become obscure.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.

I often want things to make definite statements. If I order onions sliced thinly on my hamburger, I don't want them to come out sort of medium. But that doesn't mean it's a reasonable desire, in all things.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

Don't express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.

Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.

I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.

Some consider the puzzles that are created by their omissions as spicy challenges, without which their texts would be boring; others shun clarity lest their work is considered trivial.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.

The single most important lesson of effective communication is this: Focus on clarity. Concentrate on precisions. Don’t worry about constructing beautiful sentences. Beauty comes from meaning, not language. Accuracy is the most effective style of all.

When I struggle to be terse, I end by being obscure.

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

a writer's first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.