Philip Rieff Quotes

• Self-confidence is inseparable from submission to the creedal order, and through that order, to the supreme authority expressed in that order. ... Deep individualism cannot exist except in relation to the highest authority. No inner discipline can operate without a charismatic institution, nor can such an institution survive without that supreme authority from a relation to whom self-confidence derives. Without an authority deeply installed, there is no foundation for individuality. Self-confidence thus expresses submission to supreme authority.

  Philip Rieff

  Self Confidence, Order, Discipline

  49 Copy quote

• Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.

  Philip Rieff

  Religious, Men, Psychological

  9 Copy quote

• Religion may have been the original cure; Freud reminds us that it was also the original disease.

  Philip Rieff

  Religion, May, Disease

  Philip Rieff, Arnold M. Eisen, Gideon Lewis-Kraus (2008). “The Jew of Culture: Freud, Moses, and Modernity”, p.69, University of Virginia Press

  6 Copy quote

• Man is tied to the weight of his own past, and even by a great therapeutic labor little more can be accomplished than a shifting of the burden.

  Philip Rieff

  Past, Men, Weight

  Philip Rieff (1979). “Freud: The Mind of the Moralist”, p.11, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

• Intellection must address the matter of its feeling.

  Philip Rieff

  Feelings, Addresses, Matter

  6 Copy quote

• Reason cannot save us, nothing can; but reason can mitigate the cruelty of living.

  Philip Rieff

  Reason, Cruelty

  Philip Rieff (1979). “Freud: The Mind of the Moralist”, p.12, University of Chicago Press

  6 Copy quote

• Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive to increased activity. The important thing is to keep going.

  Philip Rieff

  Men, Important, May

  Philip Rieff (1987). “The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud”, p.41, University of Chicago Press

  6 Copy quote

• Beyond the wounds of the child and the scars of the man, there is something in the heart of love itself that makes love pathetic.

  Philip Rieff

  Love, Children, Heart

  Philip Rieff (1979). “Freud: The Mind of the Moralist”, p.164, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

• Scholarship is polite argument.

  Philip Rieff

  Knowledge, Argument, Scholarship

  4 Copy quote

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