Paul Goodman Quotes

Quotes about:

• Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now!

  Paul Goodman

  Dream, Inspiration, Talking

  "Commonist Tendencies: Mutual Aid Beyond Communism". Book by Jeff Shantz, July 23, 2013.

  23 Copy quote

• The philosophic aim of education must be to get each one out of his isolated class and into the one humanity.

  Paul Goodman

  Education, Class, Humanity

  11 Copy quote

• In America you can say anything you want - as long as it doesn't have any effect.

  Paul Goodman

  America, Long, Political

  11 Copy quote

• It is by losing himself in the objective, in inquiry, creation, and craft, that a man becomes something.

  Paul Goodman

  Commitment, Inquiry, Crafts

  Paul Goodman (1962). “The Community of Scholars, 1962”

  5 Copy quote

• Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite social-psychological hypothesis: that forceful, graceful and intelligent behaviour occurs only when there is an uncoerced and direct response to the physical and social environment; that in most human affairs, more harm than good results from compulsion, top-down direction, bureaucratic planning, pre-ordained curricula, jails, conscription, states.

  Paul Goodman

  Intelligent, Jail, Top Down

  Paul Goodman (1967). “Like a conquered province: the moral ambiguity of America”

  11 Copy quote

• The ancient dream of man to fly among the stars and go through the could and look down on the lands and seas has degenerated in its realization to the socialized and apathetic behavior of passengers who hardly look out the windows.

  Paul Goodman

  Dream, Stars, Men

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 144), 1956.

  4 Copy quote

• We live increasingly in a system in which little direct attention is paid to the object, the function, the program, the task, the need; but immense attention to the role, the procedure, prestige, and profit.

  Paul Goodman

  Tasks, Needs, Roles

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.8, New York Review of Books

  11 Copy quote

• The issue is not whether people are 'good enough' for a particular type of society; rather it is a matter of developing the kind of social institutions that are most conducive to expanding the potentialities we have for intelligence, grace, sociability and freedom.

  Paul Goodman

  Issues, People, Grace

  9 Copy quote

• All men are creative but few are artists.

  Paul Goodman

  Art, Artist, Men

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Goodman

  Men, Imagination, Groups

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.89, New York Review of Books

  9 Copy quote

• A good teacher feels his way, looking for response.

  Paul Goodman

  Teacher, Teaching, Way

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.16, New York Review of Books

  12 Copy quote

• Not to teach the whole curriculum is to give up on the whole man.

  Paul Goodman

  Giving Up, Men, Curriculum

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.80, New York Review of Books

  12 Copy quote

• No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.

  Paul Goodman

  Compassion, Anxiety, Feelings

  Paul Goodman (1977). “Nature Heals”

  5 Copy quote

• Freud pointed out, in his Problem of Lay Analysis, that it is extremely unlikely that a young man who would throw the best years of his life into the cloistered drudgery of getting an M.D. degree, could possibly make a good psychoanalyst; so he preferred to look for young analysts among the writers, the lawyers, the mothers of families, those who had chosen human contact. But in their economic wisdom, the Psychoanalytic Institute of Vienna (and New York) overruled him.

  Paul Goodman

  Mother, New York, Men

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (pp. 145-146), 1956.

  14 Copy quote

• The irony is that in our decades, the combination of rationalism, asceticism, and individualism (the so-called Protestant Ethic) has produced precisely the system of boondoggling, luxury-consumption, and status.

  Paul Goodman

  Luxury, Asceticism, Ethics

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.131, New York Review of Books

  4 Copy quote

• Let me formulate the artistic disposition as follows: it is reacting with one's ideal to the flaw in oneself and in the world, and somehow making that reaction formation solid enough in the medium so that it indeed becomes an improved bit of real world for others.

  Paul Goodman

  Real, World, Artistic

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 176), 1956.

  4 Copy quote

• My own view, for what it's worth, is that sexuality is lovely, there cannot be too much of it, it is self-limiting if it is satisfactory, and satisfaction diminishes tension and clears the mind for attention and learning.

  Paul Goodman

  Sex, Self, Views

  10 Copy quote

• A successful revolution establishes a new community. A missed revolution makes irrelevant the community that persists. And a compromised revolution tends to shatter the community that was, without an adequate substitute.

  Paul Goodman

  Successful, Community, Adequate

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.195, New York Review of Books

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Goodman

  Art, Discovery, Civilization

  9 Copy quote

• Few great men would have got past personnel.

  Paul Goodman

  Funny, Business, Past

  8 Copy quote

• The importance of the Beats is twofold: first, they act out a critique of the organized system that everybody in some sense agrees with. But second-and more important in the long run-they are a kind of major pilot study of the use of leisure in an economy of abundance.

  Paul Goodman

  Running, Long, Important

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.155, New York Review of Books

  4 Copy quote

• Low pay generally means harder work under worse conditions.

  Paul Goodman

  Mean, Pay, Lows

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.57, New York Review of Books

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Goodman

  Power, Matter, Comedy

  4 Copy quote

• The family is the American fascism.

  Paul Goodman

  Family, Fascism

  "Family Fever" by Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. June/July 1984.

  11 Copy quote

• Be patient, do nothing, cease striving. We find this advice disheartening and therefore unfeasible because we forget it is our own inflexible activity that is structuring the reality. We think that if we do not hustle, nothing will happen and we will pine away. But the reality is probably in motion and after a while we might take part in that motion. But one can't know.

  Paul Goodman

  Reality, Thinking, Advice

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

  4 Copy quote

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