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Alienation Quotes

Browse 444 quotes about Alienation.

Alienation Quotes

“I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human.”

People Writing Trying Humans Evil Alienation

Author:Etgar Keret

“My rage and sense of alienation as to how women have been written, have allowed themselves to be written, in so many ways, has political roots.”

Way Has Beens Political Written Roots Rage Alienation

Author:Kate Zambreno

“Greatest American Hero, I really dug that as a kid, because it had an alienation to it, where he was given a gift and didn't know why, and yet he was forced to do something with it and he was very much an out-of-place character who was trying to cope with his own surroundings, and I can kind of relate to that guy.”

Knows Trying Kind I Can Character Kids Guy Given Hero Relate Surroundings Alienation That Guy American Hero

Author:Rhys Darby

“You feel so happy about that, that you feel loving towards these poor being who are suffering in their separateness, and their alienation Then have the problem of how to help them get free, because just by your knowing that they're essentially free, that doesn't free them. Just by your being blissful, it doesn't release them from their knot of separation and false self absolutization.”

Feels Self Helping Problem Suffering Poor Knowing Separation Release Alienation Knots Separateness

Author:Robert Thurman

“Everyone has experienced alienation - at some point you go through a moment where you say: "I just want to be left alone." And what is the ultimate point of being alone? - it's dying, of course.”

Want Moments Courses Left Dying Ultimate Alienation Left Alone

Author:Tobias Segal

“I was interested in the ways that artists responded to totalitarianism - the Czech Jazz Section, Romanian absurdist theatre, Brecht's alienation effect. The anything-goes, anarchic qualities of jazz and Surrealism seemed to offer a way to cross some of the forbidden frontiers of Eastern Europe.”

Way Artist Quality Effects Offers Europe Crosses Jazz Theatre Sections Eastern Forbidden Alienation Frontiers Totalitarianism Surrealism Eastern Europe Czech Anything Goes Brecht

Author:Nicholas Royle

“The music that I have always liked has always been more rooted in anger or sadness or alienation or any of those inspirational factors that drove rock'n'roll, gospel, and blues. I tend not to value a more pop aesthetic.”

Values Sadness Rocks Pops Factors Aesthetic Rock N Roll Rooted Alienation

Author:DJ Shadow

“American culture never necessarily made sense to me, but they should warn you: leaving comes with a huge sense of alienation that never goes away.”

Should Made Culture Huge Leaving Alienation American Culture

Author:Jessa Crispin

“What I wanted to try and figure out was, okay, in contemporary 21st century life the alienation between the self and the land around you or the self and even the urban landscape. You name it.”

Trying Self Wanted Names Land Century Figures Okay Contemporary Landscape Urban 21st Century Alienation Urban Landscape

Author:DJ Spooky

“What's important to me is that there's a necessary alienation between me and the subject. I don't want to know them well. I don't want to have any intimate contact with them.”

Knows Want Wells Important Subjects Contact Intimate Alienation What's Important

Author:Gregory Crewdson

“I believe that God is making all things new. I believe that Christ overcame death and that pattern is apparent all through life and history: life from death, water from a stone, redemption from failure, connection from alienation. I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything's easy.”

Believe Suffering I Believe Easy Christ Water Built All Things Stones Connections Patterns Redemption Narrative Alienation All Things New

Author:Shauna Niequist

“We deny our nature to build and create and then wonder why there is so much alienation and dissatisfaction.”

Wonder Deny Alienation Dissatisfaction

Author:Frank Gehry

“You can find many philosophy papers on the themes of 'love' and 'friendship,' most of which are cheerful and somewhat anodyne; you don't find many on the loss of friends, relatives, and lovers from death or alienation, though it happens all the time.”

Philosophy Happens Loss Lovers Paper Theme Cheerful Papers Alienation Love And Friendship Loss Of A Friend

Author:Catherine Wilson

“So, how can we live in joy - and how can we know that we're supposed to live in joy the way people tell us to - when we're believing thoughts that bring on sadness and frustration and anger and alienation and loneliness? When we're believing those thoughts, we think that's the world, rather than what we're believing about the world. We're like lost little children.”

People Thinking Knows World Way Believe Children Littles Joy Lost Sadness Loneliness Frustration Alienation

Author:Byron Katie

“I have a very simple mantra and it's this: I want to make black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of black music. That's my big goal. The larger preoccupation is how do we force cinema to respond to the existential, political, and spiritual dimensions of who we are as a people.”

People Want Bigs Spiritual Political Force Goal Black Simple Cinema Who We Are Dimensions Existential Alienation Mantras Preoccupation Black Music Spiritual Dimensions

Author:Arthur Jafa

“Marx's early manuscripts, with their roots in the Enlightenment and Romanticism, derived fundamental concepts such as alienation from a conception of human nature - what we would call genetically determined.”

Humans Human Nature Enlightenment Concepts Roots Fundamentals Determined Conception Alienation Romanticism Manuscripts

Author:Noam Chomsky

“What I like about [Berthold] Brecht, it's very interesting. When Helene Weigel came over and somebody talked about Lotte Lenya and said "well, she wasn't alienating." And Weigel said "No, no, no. Why, Lotte Lenya was so true - who cares?" She said: "Berti only developed the theory of alienation in order to stop bad acting." I heard her say that. Now that's brilliant.”

Wells Said Care Order Interesting Acting Heard Theory Brilliant Who Cares Very Interesting Alienation Brecht Bad Acting

Author:John Hurt

“This whole theory of alienation that intellectuals have been passing on, really is just to stop a lot of ham acting. If you fill something with a proper emotion, it didn't worry him at all.”

Ifs Has Beens Whole Acting Emotion Worry Theory Passing Passings Alienation Ham Passing On

Author:John Hurt

“I discovered suddenly that alienation, exploitation of man by man, under-nourishment, relegated to the background metaphysical evil which is a luxury.”

Men Evil Backgrounds Luxury Exploitation Metaphysical Alienation Nourishment

Author:Jean-Paul Sartre

“What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature.”

Men World Problem Reality Asks Literature Color Fundamentals Threat Hunger Alienation

Author:Jean-Paul Sartre

“That kind of unease, that melancholy, is of course partly my interpretation, but partly, I think, it's something that's really there [in America] as well. It resonates with this moment and the sort of alienation from the power structure a lot of people feel, as well as a certain amount of desperation, in the hope of disrupting the power structure so they can live better lives. I think in those ways, it's intimately connected to today.”

People Thinking Way Feels Wells Kind Moments Today America Certain Courses Amount Structure Connected Interpretation Melancholy Desperation Better Life Alienation

Author:Peter van Agtmael

“I never think in terms of alienation; it's the others who do. Alienation means one thing to Hegel, another to Marx and yet another to Freud; so it is not possible to give a single definition, one that will exhaust the subject. It is a question bordering on philosophy, and I'm not a philosopher nor a sociologist. My business is to tell stories, to narrate with images - nothing else. If I do make films about alienation - to use that word that is so ambiguous - they are about characters, not about me.”

Ifs Thinking Giving Mean Philosophy Character Stories Use Film Term One Thing Subjects Definitions Philosopher Alienation Ambiguous Hegel Sociologists

Author:Michelangelo Antonioni

“I was keen to dispel a familiar misunderstanding: that existentialists somehow relish the alienation of human beings from the world. This may have been Camus's attitude, but it was certainly not that of Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, each of whom tried to show that we can only experience the world in relation to our own projects and purposes. The world is initially one of 'equipment', said Heidegger: it is a world of 'tasks', said Sartre.”

World Humans May Has Beens Said Shows Purpose Human Beings Attitude Projects Tasks Relation Familiar Equipment Misunderstanding Alienation Relish Existentialist Heidegger

Author:David E. Cooper

“Populism is about is alienation in large numbers of people, but aggravated and provoked by a deteriorating economic conditions.”

People Economic Alienation Aggravated

Author:Preston Manning

“'Lost in Translation' movie says something interesting about the alienation of being a stranger in a strange land, but also of being a celebrity. That kind of feeling of not being in the same strata as everyone else.”

Kind Feelings Interesting Strange Stranger Alienation Something Interesting Stranger In A Strange Land

Author:Raphael Bob-Waksberg

“The music certainly plays a major role. You can be free enough to comfort each other, to touch each other, to embrace each other, to engage each other, to not be afraid of each other. The music certainly has that very strong element. Go back to folk songs, gospel, jazz, and spirituals. See, all of that came out of tremendous pain and hurt, rejection, loss, alienation, and abandonment. What I'm doing is I'm expressing my pain and hope at the same time.”

Enough Pain Song Strong Hurt Loss Comfort Embrace Jazz Rejection Very Strong Alienation Abandonment

Author:Cecil Williams

“You could ask: Why are people attracted to narratives that justify the terrible things that we're doing to the planet? Why are people attracted to narratives of control and fear and hunting down the terrorists, and this uncaring attitude toward nature? These come from what I call the perceptions of separation and the experience of separation, the experience of alienation, the experience of scarcity and anxiety and competition, and a world in which everybody is out for themselves and nobody cares.”

People World Care Attitude Terrible Anxiety Perception Competition Separation Terrorist Justify Hunting Alienation Nobody Cares

Author:Charles Eisenstein

“I think if anything, the fact that it's popular right now makes me go: "Well, I guess I'm going to start doing something else then in the next few years." I dunno, it almost feels hackneyed at this point. To start a premise by saying, "I did this awkward thing." But then again, awkwardness and feeling alienated are always going to be a part of comedy. Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.”

Thinking Feelings Comedy Awkward Alienation Awkwardness

Author:Mike Birbiglia

“I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human. I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic. When I see this kind of stuff, I think, they're smart, but I don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.”

People Thinking Writing Trying Kind Art Artist Evil Smart Alienation Misanthropic

Author:Etgar Keret

“My point is that the alienation of theory and practice, intellectual and manual labor, is a real issue, but it's the outcome of social domination; it's sort of a mistake to blame it on the subjects of that domination.”

Real Mistake Intellectual Labor Blame Domination Alienation

Author:Joshua Clover

“One of the great drivers of the alienation that has made Donald Trump possible is that the growth in the American economy has been weak. In the decade from 2005 to 2015, there was not one year when the US hit three per cent growth. And to the extent there's been growth, virtually all of it has been collected by the top 10 per cent of the population. Obviously, if we knew how to make growth faster, we would. We don't. And it's very difficult to make growth more broadly shared. Because it's not just the US that has this problem.”

Problem Difficult Growth Economy Weak Alienation

Author:David Frum

“Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.”

Humans Human Beings Destiny Fate Violence Diversity Social Justice Alienation Outrageous

Book:The Politics of Experience

Source: The Politics of Experience

“There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it.”

Way Left Society One Way Retreat Alienation Present Day

Author:Roland Barthes

“Sociologists well understand that chaos at home causes violent behavior, educational failure and social alienation among children. Yet, many of us in America stay far, far away from this topic. That in itself is a national scandal. Bad parenting is gravely harming this nation.”

Wells Children Home America Nations Social Causes Behavior Chaos Educational Violent Far Away Topics Scandal Alienation Sociologists Bad Parenting

Author:Bill O'Reilly

“The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.”

Doe Country Economic Increase Historical Socialism Socialist Alienation Collectivism Inefficiency Socialist Countries

Book:The Encyclicals of John Paul II

Source: The Encyclicals of John Paul II

“I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.”

Want Feels Kind Serious Wake Up Passionate Various Engagement Alienation

Author:Susan Sontag

“Clinton feels a profound alienation from the Washington culture here, and I happen to agree with him.”

Feels Happens Culture Agree Profound Clinton Agreement Alienation

Author:Bob Woodward

“In the history of humanity there are no civilizations or cultures which fail to manifest, in one or a thousand ways, this need for an absolute that is called heaven, freedom, a miracle, a lost paradise to be regained, peace, the going beyond History... There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.... Humanity has always had a nostalgia for the freedom that is only beauty, that is only real; life, plenitude, light.”

“Loneliness is caused by an alienation from life. It is a loneliness from your real self.”

Real Self Loneliness Alienation Real Self Cybernetics Psycho Cybernetics

Book:PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS

Source: PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS

“Even if I turned myself in, it wouldn't change anything. It wouldn't make me one of them. I knew that when I got my powers, but really I knew it before then. I learned it as a child on my first day of school, on the warm rainy streets of Bangkok, and in college. If you're different you always know it, and you can't fix it even if you want to. What do you do when you find out your heart is the wrong kind? You take what you're given, and be the hero you can be. Hero to your own cold, inverted heart.”

Ifs Knows Want Firsts Heart Kind Children Different School Given Streets College Cold Hero Warm Alienation Rainy Inverted First Day Of School Bangkok

Author:Austin Grossman

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”

Source: The Sense of Wonder

“There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.”

“Trees're always a relief, after people.”

People Tree Relief Alienation

Book:Black Swan Green

Source: Black Swan Green

“I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.”

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower YA edition

“Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.”

Men World Feels Humans Made Lost Force Social Human Beings Powerful Modern Creation Built Machines Complicated Ownership Powerless Alienation Modern Society Man Made Things

Author:Erich Fromm

“Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.”

Feels Made Ideas Felt Uncomfortable Urges Laziness Alienation Gave Up Understand Me

Author:Albert Camus

“He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.”

Terrible Alienation Dehumanization

Book:The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works

Source: The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works

“Feminist education — the feminist classroom — is and should be a place where there is a sense of struggle, where there is visible acknowledgment of the union of theory and practice, where we work together as teachers and students to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have become so much the norm in the contemporary university.”

Source: Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black

“A lone walker is both present and detached, more than an audience but less than a participant. Walking assuages or legitimizes this alienation.”

Audience Walking Alienation Participants Detached Lone Walkers

Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Source: Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.”

Ifs Needs Political Artist Sin Economic Involved Politician Doctors Profound Entertainment Comedian Rebellion Stability Savior Economist Alienation

Book:A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

Source: A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers