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We do not behave as if we believed that the affairs of our world were significant enough for the intervention of great men.

Paul Goodman

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Paul Goodman
Age: 60 †
Born: 1911
Born: September 9
Died: 1972
Died: August 2
Lgbtiq+ Rights Activist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Political Scientist
Psychotherapist
Sociologist
Writer
the Village
Enough
Great
Men
Intervention
World
Affairs
Behave
Affair
Believed
Significant

More quotes by Paul Goodman

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A well-known magazine asks a man how they should refer to him, as Psychologist X, as Author X? He suggests man of letters, for that is what he is, in the eighteenth-century meaning. But they can't buy that because the word doesn't exist in Time-style he cannot be that, and presumably the old function of letters cannot exist.
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What the devil to do with the sentence Who the devil does he think he's fooling? You can't write Whom the devil- .
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It rarely adds anything to say, In my opinion - not even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion and you are not the Pope.
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It then becomes necessary to stop short and make a choice: Either/Or. Either one drifts with their absurd system of ideas, believing that this is the human community. Or one dissents totally from their system of ideas and stands as a lonely human being. (But luckily one notices that the others are in the same crisis and making the same choices.)
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In a milieu of resignation, where the young men think of society as a closed room in which there are no values but the rejected rat race, ... it is extremely hard to aim at objective truth or world culture. One's own products are likely to be personal or parochial.
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It is by losing ourselves in inquiry, creation & craft that we become something. Civilization is a continual gift of spirit: inventions, discoveries, insight, art. We are citizens, as Socrates would have said, & we have it available as our own.
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Nothing could be more stupid than for the communications commission to give to people who handle the means of broadcasting the inventing of what to broadcast, and then, disturbed at the poor quality, to worry about censorship.
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Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.
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The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by mass media notoriously phony.
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For mankind, speech with a capital S is especially meaningful and committing, more than the content communicated. The outcry of the newborn and the sound of the bells are fraught with mystery more than the baby's woeful face or the venerable tower.
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The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.
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Few great men could pass personnel.
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Because of their historical theory of the alienation of labor (that the worker must become less and less in control of the work of his hands) the Marxist parties never fought for the man-worthy job itself.
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It is by losing himself in the objective, in inquiry, creation, and craft, that a man becomes something.
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Comedy is something that we can all share, no matter what language we speak or our background, it has the power to unite us all.
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We certainly have at present the dismal situation that the most imaginative men are directed by a group, the top managers, who are among the least.
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American society has tried so hard and so ably to defend the practice and theory of production for profit and not primarily for use that now it has succeeded in making its jobs and products profitable and useless.
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There is only one curriculum, no matter what the method of education: what is basic and universal in human experience and practice, the underlying structure of culture.
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The family is the American fascism.
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The stultifying effect of the movies is not that the children see them but that their parents do, as if Hollywood provided a plausible adult recreation to grow up into.
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