Paul Goodman Quotes - Page 3

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• Penology...has become torture and foolishness, a waste of money and a cause of crime...a blotting out of sight and heightening of social anxiety.

  Paul Goodman

  Sight, Anxiety, Waste

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Goodman

  Jobs, Party, Men

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.42, New York Review of Books

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• An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off the goal Few great men could pass personnel

  Paul Goodman

  Life And Love, Eye, Men

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• Few great men could pass personnel.

  Paul Goodman

  Business, Men, Great Men

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 153), 1956.

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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.

  Paul Goodman

  Stupid, Communication, Mean

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

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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.

  Paul Goodman

  Add, Modesty, Opinion

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

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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.

  Paul Goodman

  Men, Thinking, Race

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 179), 1956.

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• To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man.

  Paul Goodman

  Powerful, Men, People

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 153-154), 1956.

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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- ".

  Paul Goodman

  Writing, Thinking, Devil

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

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• Wrong' training can be a very innocent thing. Consider a father who allows his child to read good books. That child may soon cease to watch television or go to the movies, nor will he eventually read Book-of-the-Month Club selections, because they are ludicrous and dull. As a young man, then, he will effectually be excluded from all of Madison Avenue and Hollywood and most of publishing, because what moves him or what he creates is quite irrelevant to what is going on: it is too fine. His father has brought him up as a dodo.

  Paul Goodman

  Children, Father, Moving

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.144, New York Review of Books

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• To want a job that exercises a man's capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the "sole prerogative" to determine the products.

  Paul Goodman

  Jobs, Exercise, Men

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.41, New York Review of Books

  4 Copy quote

• The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by mass media notoriously phony.

  Paul Goodman

  Media, Organization, Phony

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

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• We define boredom as the pain a person feels when he's doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won't, can't, or doesn't dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e.g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can't learn, or be intelligent about, what he's not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere.

  Paul Goodman

  Pain, Blessing, Intelligent

  "Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (pp. 71-72), 1956.

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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.

  Paul Goodman

  Movie, Children, Growing Up

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.76, New York Review of Books

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• When we choose a man to beautify our towns, we do not automatically call on the major artists of the world. ... We now lavishly praise Frank Lloyd Wright, but we never made any community use of him, though he longed for the chance.

  Paul Goodman

  Artist, Men, Community

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 153), 1956.

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• The "brightness" of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions.

  Paul Goodman

  Children, Long Ago, Profound

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 85), 1956.

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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.

  Paul Goodman

  Meaningful, Baby, Sound

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

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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.

  Paul Goodman

  Travel, Space, Land

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

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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.

  Paul Goodman

  Men, Style, Magazines

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.133, New York Review of Books

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