Rieff Quotes & Sayings

Scholarship is polite argument. — Philip Rieff

Perhaps we become accustomed to our grief and, as it becomes increasingly familiar, increasingly part of the emotional landscape, it becomes a dullness. But there is no closure, no forgetting. One mourns those one has loved who have died until one joins them. It happens soon enough. — David Rieff

I knew one person in the entire city of New York. Looking back, I should have been terrified, but I was just excited to living in New York on my own and acting professionally. — Rachel Boston

Whether you think something is possible or impossible, you'll most certainly be right. Because your belief determines your behavior. — Robin S. Sharma

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

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

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

The only right a Christian has is the right to give up his rights. — Oswald Chambers

Loving kindness is the practice of offering to oneself and others wishes to be happy, peaceful, healthy, strong — Sharon Salzberg

Hedonism is not heroism for most men. The pagans in the ancient world did not realize that and so lost out to the "despicable" creed of Judeo-Christianity. Modern men equally do not realize it, and so they sell their souls to consumer capitalism or consumer communism or replace their souls - as Rank said - with psychology. Psychotherapy is such a growing vogue today because people want to know why they are unhappy in hedonism and look for the faults within themselves. Unrepression has become the only religion after Freud - as Philip Rieff so well argued in a recent book; evidently he did not realize that his argument was an updating and expansion of exactly what Rank had maintained about the historical role of psychology. — Ernest Becker

All major religious traditions accept that suffering and death are simply part of life. The deep radicalism of humanitarian action is its belief that people are not made to suffer. — David Rieff

The truth is, Jung has brought back one member of the old duality, unreason, with a new name; it is no synthesis at all, but only the latest maneuver in the war against rationality that has been conducted with rising hysteria by literary intellectuals and humanists against the laws of a culture they have reason to distrust and disobey. The Jungian theory proposes to every disaffected humanist his "personal myth," as a sanctuary against the modern world. Against the vulgar democracy of intelligence, Jungian theory proposes an aristocracy of feeling. From this proposal derives Jung's persistent influence on modern critical and aesthetic style. — Philip Rieff

Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased. — Philip Rieff

Intellection must address the matter of its feeling. — Philip Rieff

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

Europe is a woman, now middle-aged, who has already had a number of heart attacks and is currently experiencing the biggest health crisis of her life, but one that need not be fatal. — Timothy Garton Ash

If you don't feel pretty, you're wrong. If you're dealing with a problem, don't be afraid to talk. And ... If you think you're alone, listen to my music 'cause I'm here for you. — Demi Lovato

How much more beautiful is the moon, Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree; The moon Wavering across a bed of tulips; The moon, Still, Upon your face. You shine, Beloved, You and the moon. But which is the reflection? — Amy Lowell

Another day down the mines of our lives. We drink 'til we stink and smoke 'til we choke because that's how we get things done, you and me. Spending our lives making things and making things out of our lives, because anything else would be dull as hell and we're damned if we're going to sit at the other end of whatever years we get saying, well, what the fuck was that for?
Years of scars, lipstick and tears, and every day the dawn comes on we turn our eyes up in surprise, saying, There's that goddamn sun again. — Warren Ellis

all just heightened the sensations of fucking the hottest man in the bar in a messy back-room encounter. Ty — Abigail Roux

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

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