On p. 176 of Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, a journal he kept from June 1958 to May 1959, Eric Hoffer complains that ideas do not gush from his mind, that his writing "lacks the quality of catharsis." "Yet only writing — any sort of writing — can justify my existence."
He was an amazing man, perhaps the purest example of the autodidact in the 20th century. He had no formal education whatsoever. His analysis of the true believer enjoys currency again, 60 years after his first book appeared, in the age of militant Islam, or rather the present age of militant Islam. Islam has been on the march before. The barbarians are once again at the gates. Is Rome the new Vienna?
More on the thinking stevedore in the aptly appellated Eric Hoffer category.