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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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Emotional and physical states can be altered by changing the breathing pattern.
Wilhelm Reich
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In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. . . The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and sexual anxiety.
Wilhelm Reich
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I am well aware of the fact that the human race has known about the existence of a universal energy related to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural science consisted of making this energy usable. This is the sole difference between my work and all preceding knowledge.
Wilhelm Reich
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In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character.
Wilhelm Reich
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I know that what you call 'God' really exists, but not in the form you think God is primal cosmic energy, the love in your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you.
Wilhelm Reich
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You think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.
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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Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.
Wilhelm Reich
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The sexual drive is nothing but the motor memory of previously remembered pleasure.
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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Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.
Wilhelm Reich
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Not until man is willing to recognize his animal nature - in the good sense of the word - will he create genuine culture.
Wilhelm Reich
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The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.
Wilhelm Reich
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Rooting in work is crucial to any accomplishment. Rooting in mere enthusiasm will in the long run force illusory measures to keep the fires of empty enthusiasm going. And this makes politics and politicians.
Wilhelm Reich
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Every seemingly arbitrary destructive action is a reaction of the organism to the frustration of a gratification of a vital need, especially of a sexual need.
Wilhelm Reich
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The unity and congruity of culture and nature, work and love, morality and sexuality, longed for from time immemorial, will remain a dream as long as man continues to condemn the biological demand for natural sexual gratification.
Wilhelm Reich
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See yourself as you really are. Listen to what none of your leaders and representatives dares tell you: You are a little, common man. Understand the double meaning of these words: little and common. Don't run. Have the courage to look at yourself!
Wilhelm Reich
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We shall no longer hang on to the tails of public opinion or to a non- existent authority on matters utterly unknown and strange. We shall gradually become experts ourselves in the mastery of the knowledge of the Future.
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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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