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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Eric Hoffer
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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Eric Hoffer
ERIC HOFFER
Awarded by
President Ronald Reagan
February 23, 1983
The son of immigrant parents, Eric Hoffer is an example of both the opportunity and the vitality of the American way of life. After overcoming his loss of sight as a child, Eric Hoffer educated himself in our public libraries. As an adult he has relished hard work and believed in its dignity, spending 23 years in jobs ranging from lumberjack to dockworker. As America's longshoreman philosopher, his books on philosophy have become classics. Mr. Hoffer's spirit, self-reliance and great accomplishments remind us all that the United States remains a land where each of us is free to achieve the best that lies within us.
Eric Hoffer (1902-83)
U.S. philosopher
"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future.
The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
"It is the true believer's ability to shut his eyes and stop his ears to facts which in
his own mind deserve never to be seen or heard which is the source of his
unequalled fortitude and consistency."
"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life."
Following the success of The True Believer , Hoffer published a series of thoughtful and original books, several of which also have entered the canon, such as The Passionate State of Mind (1955) and The Ordeal of Change (1963).
As his fame spread, he responded generously to students and scholars who contacted him. He held office hours at the University of California-Berkeley and talked to Stanford students and faculty in seminars, Danielson said. "Even in an academic role, he proudly continued to wear his working class clothes and talk naturally in the manner of a longshoreman. While his writing style is coolly reasoned and precise, his speaking was animated and charismatic."
A Public Broadcasting Service series captured this aspect of his personality, and President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982. The following year saw the publication of his last book, Truth Imagined . He died in 1983 at the age of 80.
Hoffer's themes have proved to be enduring ones: the nature of mass movements, social violence, the social role of intellectuals and the dynamics of social change. "Many of his comments have proven to be prescient. He noted that the greatest threat to the Soviet state would come at some future time with the first attempt to have 'the iron totalitarian rule relaxed,'" Danielson said.
Among his most widely quoted aphorisms is a reflection on the nature of ideology: "We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand" (from The True Believer ).
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Medal History
