“As a full-time longshoreman I am necessarily more a scribbler than a writer. But I am also so by inclination. The writing I can enjoy is the sketching of an idea in a few dozen words — two hundred at most. Elaboration and expansion are for me hard going. An article of several thousand words becomes inevitably a mosaic of ideas — a series of ideas stuck together.”

— Eric Hoffer

Entry (1962)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "As a full-time longshoreman I am necessarily more a scribbler than a writer. But I am also so by inclination. The writi…" by Eric Hoffer?

Eric Hoffer 240

American philosopher 1898–1983

Related quotes

“You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Calculus Gems (1992) by George F. Simmons

“I have no particular political views but I was and am struck by the idea that the left and the right are always entirely similar when they become extreme - they click together like two edges of a magnet.”

Alan Williams (novelist) (1935) novelist

Toomey, Philippa. "Tilting at windmills", London Times, 8 July 1978, p. 12.

“I am not a science fiction writer. I am a fantasy writer. But the label got put on me and stuck.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Ray Bradbury interview http://lists.topica.com/lists/gsn-newsday-list/read/message.html?sort=t&mid=911788456 March 23, 2005

“If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.”

Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) Swedish chemist, innovator, and armaments manufacturer

As quoted in The 12 best Questions To Ask Customers (2001), by Jim Meisenheimer, p. 26.

“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed in Lincoln the Lawyer (1906) by Frederick Trevor Hill — Hill noted that he could find no record of whom Lincoln was insulting.
Posthumous attributions