It is not a sign of good mental health to be well adapted to a sick society. [Jiddu Krishnamurti].
A healthy society is one that corresponds to man’s needs, not necessarily to what he feels to be his needs, for even the most pathological aspirations can be subjectively felt to be what an individual most desires, but to what are objectively his needs, such as can be ascertained by the study of man. Our first task is to determine what the nature of man is, and what needs arise from it. [Erich Fromm]
Every experience of psychic distress can be traced back to a structural conflict between belonging and individuation, that is, between social duties and individual rights represented at the conscious level and, more intensely, at the unconscious level. [Luigi Anèpeta]
It is not possible to draw a line between social and individual psychology. [George Herbert Mead]
Man is at once superego, ego and id; he is at once society, individual, species. [Edgar Morin].
The ego is not master in its own house. [Sigmund Freud].
… it can be said that any dynamic set of events and objects that possesses suitably complex causal circuits and in which appropriate energy relations are in force, will certainly exhibit characteristics peculiar to the mind. Such a set will perform comparisons, that is, it will be sensitive to difference (as well as being affected by ordinary physical ’causes’ such as collisions or forces); it will ‘process information,’ and it will inevitably be self-correcting, either in the direction of homeostatic optimality or in the direction of maximizing certain variables. … [Gregory Bateson].
The lack of something desired is an indispensable part of happiness. [Bertrand Russell]
The human brain is a vast organized society composed of many different parts. Inside the human skull are crammed hundreds of different types of motors and organizations, wonderful systems that have evolved and accumulated over hundreds of millions of years. Some of these systems, for example the parts of the brain that make us breathe, function almost independently. But in most cases these parts of the mind have to coexist with others, in a relationship that is sometimes one of cooperation, but more often one of conflict. It follows that our decisions and actions almost never have simple and unambiguous explanations, but are usually the result of the activities of large societies of processes in a continuous relationship of challenge, conflict or mutual exploitation. The great possibilities of intelligence arise from this enormous diversity, and not from a few simple principles. [Marvin Minsky]
How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything we consciously intend is caused by events in our brains that we do not intend and of which we are totally unaware? We can’t. [Sam Harris].
According to Epicurus, we are happy when we perceive pleasant sensations and when we do not perceive unpleasant ones. Similarly, Jeremy Bentham established that nature has given dominion over man to two masters-pleasure and pain-and they alone determine everything we do, say and think. Bentham’s successor, John Stuart Mill, explained that happiness is nothing but pleasure and freedom from pain, and that beyond pleasure and pain there is no good or evil. Anyone who tries to deduce good and evil from something else (such as God’s word or national interest) is deceiving you, and perhaps deceiving himself first. [Yuval Noah Harari].
As life drags us along, we believe that we are acting on our own initiative, choosing our own activities, our own pleasures, but, on closer inspection, it is only the designs, the trends of our time, that we too are forced to follow. [J. W. Goethe].
We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge, ourselves to ourselves: this is a fact that has its good reasons. We have never sought ourselves – how could it ever happen that we might, one fine day find ourselves? [F. Nietzsche].
The needs induced by the old capitalism were basically very similar to basic needs. The needs, on the other hand, that the new capitalism can induce are totally and perfectly unnecessary and artificial. [Pier Paolo Pasolini]
The people who are easiest to manipulate are those who most believe in free will. [Yuval Noah Harari]
Do not cut what you can melt. [Joseph Joubert].
“I did this,” says my memory. “I could not have done this,” says my pride and remains adamant. In the end it is memory that gives way. [Friedrich Nietzsche].
Biology is engineering. [Daniel Dennett].
There are people who, according to the data we have, have suffered from a lack of love in the first few months of their lives and as a result have lost the desire and ability to give and receive affection forever. [Abraham H. Maslow]
Making good choices is a crucial skill at every level. [Peter Drucker].
Consciousness is the only thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion. [Sam Harris].
It seems clear and obvious, yet it must be reiterated: isolated knowledge achieved by a group of specialists in a limited field has no value in itself, it finds it only in synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only to the extent that it contributes to answering the question “Who are we?” [Erwin Schrodinger]
We do not see things as they are but as we are. [Anaïs Nin].
A thought comes when it wants “him,” not when I want “me.” [Friedrich Nietzsche].
The basis of all wanting is need, lack, that is, pain, to which man is bound from origin, by nature. Coming instead to lack objects of desire, when this is taken away by too easy gratification, tremendous emptiness and boredom oppress him: that is, his very nature and being become intolerable burdens to him. His life thus swings like a pendulum, this way and that, between pain and boredom, which are in fact its true constituent elements. [Arthur Schopenhauer].
The best weapon we have against stress is the ability to choose one thought over another. [William James]
Man is the creature who does not know what to desire and turns to others in order to decide. We desire what others desire for the simple reason that we imitate their desires. [René Girard].
One must always keep the whole in mind. If one stops at the detail, it is easy to be wrong and one has only a wrong view of things. [Arthur Schopenhauer].
The distrust with which the extrovert looks at the inner world is equal to that with which the introvert looks at the outer world. [Carl Gustav Jung].
Lord, do not give me what I desire, but only what I really need. [Antoine de Saint-Exupery].
Everyone needs to find reasons for their passion. [Marcel Proust].
I do not need esteem, nor glory, nor any other such thing; but I do need love. [Giacomo Leopardi]
From the moment a person creates a theory, his imagination sees in everything only the features that confirm that theory. [Thomas Jefferson].
The starting point of all economic inquiry is human needs. Without needs there would be no economy, no social economy, no science related to them. Needs are the fundamental cause; the importance their satisfaction has for us, the fundamental measure; the security of their satisfaction, the ultimate aim of every human economy. [Carl Menger].
The weak man is always afraid of change. He feels secure in the status quo, and he has a morbid fear of the new. For him the greatest annoyance is the annoyance of a new idea. [Martin Luther King].
Do what you are most afraid of and the end of fear is certain. [Mark Twain].
There is nothing so practical as good theory. [Kurt Lewin].
The psychiatrist is a guy who asks you a lot of expensive questions that your wife asks you for free. [Woody Allen].
Every want arises from need, that is, from lack, that is, from suffering. This is ended by fulfillment; however, for one desire, which is fulfilled, there remain at least ten others unsatisfied; moreover, the craving lasts a long time, the needs go on forever; fulfillment is brief and measured with a miserly hand. Indeed, the final satisfaction itself is only apparent: the fulfilled desire gives rise to a new desire in toto; that is a recognized error, this an error not yet known. No object of desire, once attained, can give lasting gratification, which no longer mutates: but rather resembles only alms, which thrown to the beggar prolongs his life today to continue his torment tomorrow. So as long as our consciousness is filled with our will; as long as we are abandoned to the drive of desires, with its perpetual hoping and fearing; as long as we are subjects of the will, we are granted neither lasting happiness nor rest. [Arthur Schopenhauer].
The only way to change our lives is to change our minds. [Ross Cooper].
Change does not always equal improvement, but to improve you must change. [Winston Churchill].
Trivers, taking his theory of emotions to its logical consequences, notes that in a world full of falsehood-detecting machines, the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You cannot have your hidden intentions revealed if you do not think they are your intentions. According to this theory of self-deception, the conscious mind hides the truth from itself in order to better hide it from others. But truth is useful, and therefore it should be recorded somewhere in the minds, well protected from the parts that interact with other people. [Steven Pinker]
Tal in solitude you live as if you were in the square. [Seneca].
You will never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, you build a model that makes reality obsolete. [Richard Fuller].