Wilhelm Reich quotes
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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 ReichSource : "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.
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“Once we open up to the flow of energy within our body, we can also open up to the flow of energy in the universe.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture is typified by characterological armoring against his inner nature and against the social misery which surrounds him. This characterolgical armoring of the character is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery, and neurotically impotent rebelliousness.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : "The Function of the Orgasm". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1927.
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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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“In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Make it plain that you have no time for war, that you have more important things to do....let the diplomats and marshals of the earth shoot each other.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : Wilhelm Reich (2013). “The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality”, p.3, Macmillan
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“Emotional and physical states can be altered by changing the breathing pattern.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the ***** are identical. Extreme ***** anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : Wilhelm Reich (1973). “The Discovery of the Orgone”
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“You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : "Listen, Little Man!". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1948.
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“In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“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 -
“A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger... The original motive is not pleasure in destruction... I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live...”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The few bad poems which occasionally are created during abstinence are of no great interest.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : Wilhelm Reich (1948). “Entdeckung Des Orgons”
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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 -
“Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“We live in a community of people not so that we can suppress and dominate eachother or make each other miserable but so that we can better and more reliably satisfy all life's healthy needs.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Work democracy does not wish to prevent or prohibit anything. Its only intention is the fulfilment of the biological life functions, of love, work and knowledge.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The discovery of orgone energy was made through consistent, thorough study of energy functions, first in the realm of the psyche, and later in the realm of biological functioning.”
-- 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 -
“How, then,' I hear you ask, 'shall I attain my end, whether it be Christian love, socialism, or American democracy?' Your Christian love and your socialism and your American democracy are what you do each day, your manner of thinking each hour, of embracing your life companion and loving your child; they are your attitude of social responsibility towards your work, and your determination not to become like the crushers of life you so hate.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The sexual drive is nothing but the motor memory of previously remembered pleasure.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“In the course of the history of natural science, it always happens that profound or true thoughts or true facts were always either distorted or flattened out. The danger, especially of distortion, is particularly great in the case of orgonomy. We must be scientific, we cannot be political in these matters. And I personally declare that I will be the first to fight with all my strength, with whatever I've got against such a distortion of our principles.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“Only a work democracy can create the foundation of genuine freedom. Long experience in sociological disputes leads me to expect that a great many people will take offense at the disclosure of this miscalculation. It makes the highest demands on people's will to veracity; it puts a heavy burden on everyday living; it places all social responsibility on those who work , be it in the factory, in the office, on the farm, in the laboratory, or wherever.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“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 -
“The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The vital energies regulate themselves naturally without compulsive duty or compulsive morality both of which are sure signs of existing antisocial impulses.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“MAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ANIMAL. Animals, as distinct from man, are not machine-like, not sadistic; their societies, within the same species, are incomparably more peaceful than those of man. The basic question, then is: What has made the animal, man, degenerate into a machine?”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.
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“Psychic disturbances are the consequences of the sexual chaos of society. For thousands of years, this chaos has had the function of psychically subjecting man to the prevailing conditions of existence, of internalizing the external mechanization of life. It has served to bring about the psychic anchoring of a mechanized and authoritarian civilization by making man incapable of functioning independently.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“You yourself create all your misery, hour after hour, day after day. You think the goal justifies the means, even the vile means. You are wrong: The goal is in the path on which you arrive at it. Every step of today is your life of tomorrow. No great goal can be reached by vile means. That you have proven in every social revolution. The vileness or inhumanity of the path to the goal makes you vile or inhuman, and the goal unattainable.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“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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“Revolutionary practice in any field of human existence develops by itself if one comprehends the contradictions in every new process; it consists in siding with those forces which act in the direction of progressive development.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : Dušan Makavejev, Wilhelm Reich (1972). “WR, mysteries of the organism: a cinematic testament to the life and teachings of Wilhelm Reich”
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“People should be _very_ careful when choosing the future fathers and mothers of their children. For that reason alone, it is extremely mean to demand a marriage certificate for life, just for one night of embracement.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“I observe to the letter all laws that make sense but combat those that are obsolete or absurd.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“Because I'm a man who works, who knows what a human being is like inside, who knows that every human being has his worth, and who wants the world to be governed by work and not by opinions about work.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The "stiff, dead, retracted pelvis" is one of man's most frequent vegetative disturbances. It is responsible for lumbago as well as for hemorrhoidal disturbances. Elsewhere, we shall demonstrate an important connection between these disturbances and genital cancer in women, which is so common. Thus, the "deadning of the pelvis" has the same function as the deadening of the abdomen, i.e., to avoid feelings, particularly those of pleasure and anxiety.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Only you yourself can be your liberator!”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : Wilhelm Reich (1948). “Listen, Little Man!: A Document from the Archives of the Orgone Institute”
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“Your liberators tell you that that your suppressors are Wilhelm, Nikolaus, Pope Gregory the Twenty Eighth, Morgan, Krupp or Ford. And your liberators are called Mussolini, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. I tell you: Only you yourself can be your liberator!”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily...”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : "Listen, Little Man!". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1948.
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“And first and foremost, think straight, trust the quiet inner voice that tells you what to do. You hold your life in your hands, don't entrust it to anyone else, least of all to your chosen leaders. BE YOURSELF! Any number of great men have told you that.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The question of how and why the encrustations and rigidifications of human emotional life are brought about led directly into the realm of vegetative life.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Only one thing matters: live a good, happy life. Do your heart's bidding, even when it leads you on paths that timid souls would avoid. Even when life is a torment, don't let it harden you.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“There is no proof. There are no authorities whatever. No president, Academy, Court of Law, Congress or Senate on this earth has the knowledge or power to decide what will be the knowledge of tomorrow. There is no use in trying to prove something that is unknown to somebody who is ignorant of the unknown, or fearful of its threatening power. Only the good old rules of learning will eventually bring about understanding of what has invaded our earthly existence.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“I do not believe that to be religious in the best, authentic sense a man has to destroy his love life and mummify himself, body and soul.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“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 -
“It is above all man's social position that decides whether he will sublimate his sadism as a butcher, surgeon, or policeman.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“You are different from the really great man in only one thing: The great man, at one time, also was a very little man, but he developed one important ability: he learned to see where he was small in his thinking, and actions. Under the pressure of some task which was dear to him he learned better and better to sense the threat that comes from his smallness and pettiness. The great man, then, knows when and in what he is a little man.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“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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“If 'freedom' means, first of all, the responsibility of every individual for the rational determination of his own personal, professional and social existence, then there is no greater fear than that of the establishment of general freedom.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The working masses of men and women, they and they alone, are responsible for everything that takes place, the good things and the bad things. True enough, they suffer most from a war, but it is their apathy, craving for authority, etc., that is most responsible for making wars possible. It follows of necessity from this responsibility that the working masses of men and women, they and they alone, are capable of establishing lasting peace.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“You have no sense of your true duty, which is to be a man and preserve humanity. You imitate wise men so badly and bandits so well. Your movies and radio programs are full of murder.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“You don't believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can't bring yourself to believe that anyone you have sat at table with, or shared a house with, is capable of great achievement. That is why all great men have been solitary. It is hard to think in your company, little man. One can only think 'about' you, or 'for your benefit', not 'with' you, for you stifle all big, generous ideas.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“Full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind. In other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion. The church, by making the fight over sexuality the center of its dogmas and of its influence over the masses, confirms this concept.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“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 -
“It is sexual energy which governs the structure of human feeling and thinking.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : Wilhelm Reich (1969). “The sexual revolution: toward a self-governing character structure”
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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 -
“It is obvious that the fascist mass pestilence, with its background of thousands of years, cannot be mastered with social measures corresponding to the past three hundred years. The discovery of the natural biological work democracy in international human intercourse is the answer to fascism. This will be no less true even if not one of the living sex-economists, orgone biophysicists or work democrats should live to see its general functioning and its victory over the irrationalism in social life.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“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 -
“For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : Wilhelm Reich (1960). “Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy”
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“I am not a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, a Mormon, Polygamist, Homosexual, Anarchist or Boxer. . . . I do not believe that, in order to be religious in the good and genuine sense of the word, one has to ruin one's love life and has to become rigid and shrunken in body and soul. I know that what you call "God" actually exists, but in a different way from what you think: as the primal cosmic energy in the universe, as your love in your body, as your honesty and your feeling of nature in you and around you.”
-- Wilhelm ReichSource : Wilhelm Reich (1948). “Listen, Little Man!: A Document from the Archives of the Orgone Institute”
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“Unless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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“Psychic health depends on orgastic potency, i.e., upon the degree to which one can surrender to and experience the climax of excitation in the natural sexual act. It is founded upon the healthy character attitude of the individual's capacity for love. Psychic illnesses are the result of a disturbance of the natural capacity for love.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“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 -
“Am I a Spaceman? Do I belong to a new race on earth, bred by men from outer space in embraces with earth women?”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
“The cry for freedom is a sign of suppression. It will not cease to ring as long as man feels himself captive. As diverse as the cries for freedom may be, basically they all express one and the same thing: The intolerability of the rigidity of the organism and of the machine-like institutions which create a sharp conflict with the natural feelings for life. Not until there is a social order in which all cries for freedom subside will man have overcome his biological and social crippling, will he have attained genuine freedom.”
-- Wilhelm Reich -
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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 ReichSource : "Listen, Little Man!". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1948.
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