Sheldon B. Kopp Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“That is one of the reasons why a man should pick a path with heart, so that he can find his laughter.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“In the long run we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“I've never began any important venture for which I felt adequate prepared”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“And so, it is not astonishing that, though the patient enters therapy insisting that he wants to change, more often than not, what he really wants is to remain the same and to get the therapist to make him feel better. (4)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“You can't make anyone love you. You just have to reveal who you are and take your chances. (105)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“If I reveal myself without worrying about how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“He may only get to keep that which he is willing to let go of.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“The continuing struggle was once described in the following metaphor by a patient who had successfully completed a long course of psychotherapy: 'I came to therapy hoping to receive butter for the bread of life. Instead, at the end, I emerged with a pail of sour milk, a churn, and instructions on how to use them.' (138)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“The only times that we can have what we long for are those moments when we stop grasping for it. At such times, all things are possible: "to a mind that is 'still' the whole universe surrenders".”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“It has been a long time since I believed in Reality. I prefer the loveliness and the terror of my subjective experiences to those coldly scientific explanations which in the long run turn out to be no more real, and far less fun, than my own fantasies and musings.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“Maintaining the illusion that I am in control is futile, lonely, and in the long run more always costly than the effort is worth.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“One can choose life, or choose death. Having chosen life, I must live it as it is.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“To live without the creative potential of our own destructiveness is to be a cardboard angel.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“Escape is not a dirty word. None of us can face what's happening head-on all of the time.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain. (23)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“I remember a group therapy session when one of the patients was reluctantly turning his corner. He would accept it, he said, but he wouldn't like the idea of having to solve problems every day for the rest of his life. My co-therapist told him that it was not required that he like it. She shared her own displeasure, saying: 'I remember that when I first discovered what life was like, I was furious. I guess I'm still kind of mad sometimes.' (135)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“So it is that there is nothing to be taught, but yet there is something to be learned.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“For each of us, the only hope resides in his own efforts, in completing his own story, not in the other's interpretation. (63)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“It is not possible to know how much is just enough, until we have experienced how much is more than enough. (64)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“When a patient says he feels stuck and confused, and through good intentions he struggles to become loose and clear, he only remains chronically trapped in the mire of his own stubbornness. If instead he will go with where he is, only then is there hope. If he will let himself get deeply into the experience of being stuck, only then will he reclaim that part of himself that is holding him. Only if he will give up trying to control his thinking, and let himself sink into his confusion, only then will things become clear. (64)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“There appear to be many people who chose to go crazy (or become alcoholics, addicts, criminals, suicides) rather than have to bear the pain and ambiguity of a life situation that they have decided that they cannot stand. (98)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“We all live in a tragicomic situation, a life that is in part absurd simply because it is not of our own making. We are born into a disordered world, into a family we did not choose, into circumstances we would have had somewhat improved, and we are even called by a name we did not select. (40)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“Anarchy could never get a man to the moon, but it may the only mode that can allow us to survive on earth.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“Sometimes life seems like a poorly designed cage within which man has been sentenced to be free.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83)”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp -
“So it is that God tugs at a pilgrim's sleeve telling him to remember that he is only human. He must be his own man, remain in exile, and belong to himself. He must pay attention to his own feelings and to the meaning of what he does, if he is to be for himself, and yet for others as well.”
-- Sheldon B. Kopp
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