15 quotes
There is undoubtedly a difference between people who manipulate other people and people who create things.
The Sane Society (1955)
Man is the only animal that can be bored.
The Sane Society (1955)
On the whole, our modern ritual is impoverished and does not fulfill man's need for collective art and ritual.
The Sane Society (1955)
The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.
The Sane Society (1955)
It is considered immoral to keep one "love" partner beyond a relatively short period of time. "Love" is short-lived sexual desire, which must be satisfied immediately.
The Sane Society (1955)
Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
The Sane Society (1955)
In order to grow out of the receptive into the productive orientation, he [man] must relate himself to the world artistically and not only philosophically or scientifically.
The Sane Society (1955)
The criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all men, of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
The Sane Society (1955)
Only if he [man] develops his reason and his love, if he can experience the natural and the social world in a human way, can he feel at home, secure in himself, and the master of his life.
The Sane Society (1955)
A relatively primitive village in which there are still real feasts, common artistic shared expressions, and no literacy at all—is more advanced culturally and more healthy mentally than our educated, newspaper-reading radio-listening culture.
The Sane Society (1955)
The transformation of an atomistic into a communitarian society depends on creating again the opportunity for people to sing together, walk together, dance together, admire together—together, and not, to use Riesman's succinct expression, as a member of a "lonely crowd."
The Sane Society (1955)
Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.
The Sane Society (1955)
In spite of increasing production and comfort, man loses more and more the sense of self, feels that his life is meaningless, even though such a feeling is largely unconscious. In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
The Sane Society (1955)
"Collective art,"… is not an individual "leisure time" occupation, added to life, it is an integral part of life. It corresponds to a basic human need, and if this is not fulfilled, man remains as insecure and anxious as if the need for a meaningful thought picture of the world were unrealized.
The Sane Society (1955)
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. In the nineteenth century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
The Sane Society (1955)