“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.”
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
“Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.”
“Show me a man or a woman alone and I ll show you a saint. Give me two and they ll fall in love. Give me three and they ll invent the charming thing we call society . Give me four and they ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they ll make one an outcast. Give me six and they ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they ll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
“Highly sensitive people are too often perceived as weaklings or damaged goods. To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the trademark of the truly alive and compassionate. It is not the empath who is broken, it is society that has become dysfunctional and emotionally disabled. There is no shame in expressing your authentic feelings. Those who are at times described as being a hot mess or having too many issues are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more caring, humane world. Never be ashamed to let your tears shine a light in this world.”
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
“Why aren t you in school? I see you every day wandering around. Oh, they don t miss me, she said. I m antisocial, they say. I don t mix. It s so strange. I m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this. She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don t think it s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That s not social to me at all. It s a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it s wine when it s not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can t do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing chicken and knock hubcaps. I guess I m everything they say I am, all right. I haven t any friends. That s supposed to prove I m abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?”
“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”
“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions. (Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953)”
“They laugh at me because I m different; I laugh at them because they re all the same.”
“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”
“For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.”
“Time s up for modern society.”
“Money and beauty run this city. Nobody wants to believe anybody that handsome and charming could be so evil.”
“Le but n est rien, le développement est tout. Le spectacle ne veut en venir à rien d autre qu à lui-même.”