Eric Hoffer Quotes

Easy reading requires hard writing.

And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.

When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected.

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.

Words are not thoughts, just like bricks are not homes. But houses are made with bricks. If you have less bricks, you will make a small house. The more words you have, the clearer your thoughts, and the more clearly you can convey them.

Style is the dress of thoughts, and let them be ever so just.

Do not put cleverness in front of the communication.

The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

There is need of brevity, that the thought may run on.

Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don't say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it's very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.

Conciseness in art is essential and a refinement. The concise man makes one think; the verbose bores. Always work towards conciseness.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote.

Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else.

Whatever we well understand we express clearly, and words flow with ease.

Grammar is...the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking.

Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice.

Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy

Nathaniel Hawthorne once said that easy reading is damn hard writing.

Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.

I feel passionately about how I express myself. Language is the greatest motivating force. You can phrase something positively and inspire people to do their best, or negatively and make them feel worried, uncertain, and self-conscious. You can talk at a fast pace and people will get nervous, feel afraid to bring up extraneous thoughts. But those are the very thoughts that might be most important! They might represent that person's best thinking. If you're rushed, you're simply not going to get at that extra level of thinking.