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The human mind has to ask Who, what, whence, whither, why am I? And it is very doubtful if the human mind can answer any of these questions.

R. D. Laing

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R. D. Laing
Age: 61 †
Born: 1927
Born: October 7
Died: 1989
Died: August 23
Author
Existential Therapist
Military Personnel
Military Physician
Non-Fiction Writer
Physician Writer
Psychiatrist
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Glasgow
Scotland
Ronald Laing
R.D. Laing
Ronald D. Laing
Ronald David Laing
Asks
Human
Humans
Whither
Mind
Whence
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More quotes by R. D. Laing

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Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
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Schizophrenia is a successful attempt not to adapt to pseudo- social realities.
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Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
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Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.
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I am quite sure that a good number of cures of psychotics consist in the fact that the patient has decided, for one reason or other, once more to play at being sane.
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We are born into a world where alienation awaits us. We are potentially men, but are in an alienated state, and this state is not simply a natural system. Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.
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One cannot say everything at once.
R. D. Laing
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I, for instance, regard any particular man as finite, as one who has had a beginning and who will have an end. He has been born, and he is going to die. In the meantime, he has a body that roots him to this time and this place.
R. D. Laing
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Each time a new baby is born there is a possibility of reprieve. Each child is a new being, a potential prophet, a new spiritual prince, a new spark of light precipitated into the outer darkness.
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No one has schizophrenia, like having a cold. The patient has not got schizophrenia. He is schizophrenic.
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What is to be done? We who are still half alive, living in the often fibrillating heartland of a senescent capitalism -- can we do more than reflect the decay around and within us? Can we do more than sing our sad and bitter songs of disillusion and defeat?
R. D. Laing
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Psychological breakdowns are actually breakthroughs to enlightenment.
R. D. Laing
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We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.
R. D. Laing
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There are good reasons for being obedient, but being unable to be disobedient is not one of the best reasons.
R. D. Laing
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If I hazard a guess as to the most endemic, prevalent anxiety among human beings-including fear of death, abandonment, loneliness-nothing is more prevalent than the fear of one another.
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Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.
R. D. Laing
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We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world - mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt.
R. D. Laing
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Perfection is something we should all strive for. It's a duty and a joy to perfect one's nature... The most difficult thing is love. A loveless, driving person that just competes in the rat race is far from perfection in my book.
R. D. Laing
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The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
R. D. Laing
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In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal.
R. D. Laing