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The Little Man does not know that he is little, and he is afraid of knowing it. He covers up his smallness and narrowness with illusions of strength and greatness...

Wilhelm Reich

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Wilhelm Reich
Age: 60 †
Born: 1897
Born: March 24
Died: 1957
Died: November 3
Academic
Philosopher
Psychiatrist
Psychoanalyst
Sex Educator
Writer
Illusion
Afraid
Strength
Knowing
Narrowness
Doe
Smallness
Littles
Covers
Little
Illusions
Men
Greatness

More quotes by Wilhelm Reich

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The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
Wilhelm Reich
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Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been, and will continue to be, life's pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.
Wilhelm Reich
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Your liberators tell you that that your suppressors are Wilhelm, Nikolaus, Pope Gregory the Twenty Eighth, Morgan, Krupp or Ford. And your liberators are called Mussolini, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. I tell you: Only you yourself can be your liberator!
Wilhelm Reich
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Because you have no memory for things that happened ten or twenty years ago, you're still mouthing the same nonsense as two thousand years ago. Worse, you cling with might and main to such absurdities as 'race,' 'class,' 'nation,' and the obligation to observe a religion and repress your love.
Wilhelm Reich
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It is above all man's social position that decides whether he will sublimate his sadism as a butcher, surgeon, or policeman.
Wilhelm Reich
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Only one thing matters: live a good, happy life. Do your heart's bidding, even when it leads you on paths that timid souls would avoid. Even when life is a torment, don't let it harden you.
Wilhelm Reich
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If freedom means, first of all, the responsibility of every individual for the rational determination of his own personal, professional and social existence, then there is no greater fear than that of the establishment of general freedom.
Wilhelm Reich
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Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples.
Wilhelm Reich
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The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people.
Wilhelm Reich
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Once we open up to the flow of energy within our body, we can also open up to the flow of energy in the universe.
Wilhelm Reich
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On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.
Wilhelm Reich
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If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible.
Wilhelm Reich
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MAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ANIMAL. Animals, as distinct from man, are not machine-like, not sadistic their societies, within the same species, are incomparably more peaceful than those of man. The basic question, then is: What has made the animal, man, degenerate into a machine?
Wilhelm Reich
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No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural.
Wilhelm Reich
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A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger... The original motive is not pleasure in destruction... I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live.
Wilhelm Reich
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The question of how and why the encrustations and rigidifications of human emotional life are brought about led directly into the realm of vegetative life.
Wilhelm Reich
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Full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind. In other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion. The church, by making the fight over sexuality the center of its dogmas and of its influence over the masses, confirms this concept.
Wilhelm Reich
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People should be _very_ careful when choosing the future fathers and mothers of their children. For that reason alone, it is extremely mean to demand a marriage certificate for life, just for one night of embracement.
Wilhelm Reich
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Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word freedom should ever be more than an empty political slogan.
Wilhelm Reich
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It is the basic evasion of the essential which is the problem of man.
Wilhelm Reich