The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is read more
When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
Psychoanalysis has changed American psychology from a diagnostic to a therapeutic science, not because so many patients are cured by read more
Psychoanalysis has changed American psychology from a diagnostic to a therapeutic science, not because so many patients are cured by the psychoanalytic technique, but because of the new understanding of psychiatric patients it has given us, and the new and different concept of illness and health.
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of read more
Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished- by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach. Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth- for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.
If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that read more
If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that you say you do, there's no way around doing the work it takes to get you there.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that read more
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all.
You've got to watch your mind all the time or you'll awaken and find a strange picture on your press.
You've got to watch your mind all the time or you'll awaken and find a strange picture on your press.
