“Be patient, do nothing, cease striving. We find this advice disheartening and therefore unfeasible because we forget it is our own inflexible activity that is structuring the reality. We think that if we do not hustle, nothing will happen and we will pine away. But the reality is probably in motion and after a while we might take part in that motion. But one can't know.” IfsThinkingKnowsRealityMightHappensForgetAdviceActivityStrivePatientCeaseFlexibleBe PatientForget ItHustleDisheartening Book:Five years Source: Five years
“I move in a society so devoid of ordinary reality that I am continually stopping to teach good sense, to give support, to help out, as a young gangster might help an old lady across the street on his way to the stick-up.” WayGivingHelpingRealityMightMovingYoungTeachSupportStreetsOrdinarySticksStoppingGood SenseGangstersOld Lady Book:Five years Source: Five years
“The ideal of having a real job that you risk your soul in and make good or be damned, belongs to the heroic age of capitalist enterprise, imbued with self-righteous beliefs about hard work, thrift, and public morals. Such an ideal might still have been mentioned in public fifty years ago; in our era of risk-insured semimonopolies and advertised vices it would be met with a ghastly stillness.” YearsHas BeensStillsRealSoulSelfHardMightWould BeAgeJobsBeliefMoralRiskHard WorkMetsIdealsYears AgoVicesErasYour SoulFiftyEnterpriseHeroicStillnessCapitalistRighteousThriftSelf RighteousGhastlyReal Jobs Book:Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society Source: Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society
“The "brightness" of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions.” KnowsChildrenLongMatterFeelingsMightCausesPercentAskingProfoundSymbolsDevicesSubstitutesLong AgoForbiddenBrightnessSmall ChildNagging Author:Paul Goodman
“No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.” FeelingsMightInterestPayAttentionCompassionPolicyObjectsAnxietyGuiltyPay AttentionMake SenseFeeling Guilty Book:Nature Heals Source: Nature Heals
